Thursday, September 30, 2004

Old and Busted: Sayin’ No to Torture
New Hotness: Outsourcing our Wetwork

It'll Be a Cold Day in Hell

Know what would be funny? If, in the whole debate over whether Indian programmers are as good as American programmers, and whether Chinese steelworkers are stealing good American jobs, we ended up outsourcing our torturers!

Long-departed and much-missed Obsidian Wings coblogger Elizabeth checks back in with a notice that this may be about to happen. In the bill generated by the 9/11 Commission Report, and sponsored by Dennis Hastert is a provision that would legalize “extraordinary rendition.” This is a process by which terror suspects-- suspects, not convicts (not that such would be better)-- would be eligible for extradition to nations where the laws and mores against torture are, shall we say, decidedly more sanguine.

The Republican leadership of Congress is attempting to legalize extraordinary rendition. “Extraordinary rendition” is the euphemism we use for sending terrorism suspects to countries that practice torture for interrogation. As one intelligence official described it in the Washington Post, “We don’t kick the sh*t out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the sh*t out of them.”

The best known example of this is the case of Maher Arar. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was deported to Syria from JFK airport. In Syria he was beaten with electrical cables for two weeks, and then imprisoned in an underground cell for the better part of a year. Arar is probably innocent of any connection to terrorism.

As it stands now, “extraordinary rendition” is a clear violation of international law--specifically, the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Degrading and Inhuman Treatment. U.S. law is less clear. We signed and ratified the Convention Against Torture, but we ratified it with some reservations. They might create a loophole that allows us to send a prisoner to Egypt or Syria or Jordan if we get “assurances” that they will not torture a prisoner--even if these assurances are false and we know they are false.

Here’s a bit of a press release from Cong. Ed Markey’s (D-MA) office, who is sponsoring a counter-bill (H.R. 1674): :

The provision Rep. Markey referred to is contained in Section 3032 and 3033 of H.R. 10, the “9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act of 2004,” introduced by House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL). The provision would require the Secretary of Homeland Security to issue new regulations to exclude from the protection of the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, any suspected terrorist - thereby allowing them to be deported or transferred to a country that may engage in torture. The provision would put the burden of proof on the person being deported or rendered to establish “by clear and convincing evidence that he or she would be tortured,” would bar the courts from having jurisdiction to review the Secretary’s regulations, and would free the Secretary to deport or remove terrorist suspects to any country in the world at will - even countries other than the person’s home country or the country in which they were born. The provision would also apply retroactively.

Says Elizabeth, and rightly:

There is no possible way for a suspect being detained in secret to prove by “clear and convincing evidence” that he will be tortured if he is deported--especially when he may be deported to a country where has never been, and when the officials who want to deport him serve as judge, jury and executioner, and when there is never any judicial review. This bill will make what happened to Maher Arar perfectly legal, and guarantee that it will happen again.

I don’t like to post “Go Read!” items, but this is one of those. Go read, then write your Congressman.

Alternatively, make a game of trying to convince me that this whole thing is a good idea. It won’t work, but if it makes you feel good, what the fuck.


Posted by Johno on 09/30/04 at 02:14 PM
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Wednesday, September 29, 2004

Take off the helmet, folks… it’s not raining men

Partisan Politics

Andrew Sullivan (who else?) notes that when Massachusetts Speaker of the House Tom Finneran leaves office this week, resistance to gay marriage in the state legislature goes with him. The new Speaker, Salvatore DiMasi, is far more socially liberal and his ascendency is expected to defuse what little resistance remains. Even the resistance thinks so.

A key legislative backer of the proposed amendment to ban same-sex marriage and establish civil unions yesterday all but declared defeat, saying that Finneran’s exit from Beacon Hill was the final straw in an effort that already was in trouble because the state has legalized same-sex marriage with little of the uproar predicted by opponents.

“It is pretty much over,” said Senate minority leader Brian P. Lees, a Springfield Republican who cosponsored the amendment with Finneran and Senate President Robert E. Travaglini. The House and Senate, sitting in a constitutional convention, must vote a second time in the next session before it could go to the voters on the 2006 ballot.

“In fact, there will be a question as to whether the issue will come up at all,” Lees said. He said the issue has faded to the “back burners of Massachusetts politics,” because few problems have surfaced with the implementation of the Supreme Judicial Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage.

Observes Sullivan,

The real reason is that the change has become a non-event. The relatively small number of marriages for same-sex couples has barely made a dent in the social fabric and the upheaval of a constitutional amendment seems to many too big a deal for such a minor social change.

This is dead on. Outside the media-visible enclaves of downtown Boston, Cambridge, and Amherst/Northampton, Massachusetts is a part-Catholic part-postPuritan blue-collar state with a large population of recent Latino immigrants and a traditionalist streak a mile wide. In short, most of the state falls into the general category of “people who might really hate this gay marriage thing.” And yet, it’s here, they’re queer, and from what I can see everyone is, in fact, used to it. Outside your fire ‘n’ brimstone pulpit parties where I’m sure the issue still surfaces any time a preacher needs some shorthand for “worldly depravity,” nobody freaking cares. Non-issue. Whoopeedeedoo.

In short, my question to the dozens of states who have either passed or are trying to pass anti-gay[marriage] legislation is: Where’s the fire, Mary? 


Posted by Johno on 09/29/04 at 05:24 PM
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IT’S ON, BABY!

That Buck Rogers Stuff

X-Prize update for Scaled Composites and SpaceShipOne: Flight 1: Success. Big time.

[wik] Well… not “big time,” quite. There was some roll that was a little scary but that the pilot was able to deal with. I’m just happy that there’s a space vehicle out there that can develop a little roll and not explode, killing everyone inside and giving their constituent molecules a tour of the upper atmosphere from Butte to Bangor. That right there is a major improvement over the “best” the gubmint has done so far.


Posted by Johno on 09/29/04 at 03:33 PM
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Monday, September 27, 2004

From the Department of Things That Should Not Be

Partisan Politics

The gnomes down in the DOTTSNB (known around here as “dotsnib,” or colloquially “The Ministry of ‘My Eyes! My Eyes!’") have submitted the following for your approval.

Three prefatory notes for my readers.

1) Be warned that the “way too goddamned much Perfidy” link does, in fact, take you to way too goddamned much Perfidy indeed.

B) Move all scissors, pens, pencils, keys, knives, letter openers, and pointy objects of any kind out of arms’ reach.

III) If you’re like me, you never noticed before that John Kerry kind of looks like Sarah Jessica Parker.  Or that John Edwards has some serious knockers. 


Posted by Johno on 09/27/04 at 07:56 PM
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Mars Needs Women

That Buck Rogers Stuff

... really I’ve just been spoiling for an excuse to use that phrase. Love it. Love. It.

Billionaire playboy and rumpled mess Richard Branson has announced the founding of Virgin Galactic, the world’s first commercial space passenger venture.

Within the decade, Branson plans to take paying customers to space. At 115K quid a pop, it’s not exactly a train ride to Altoona, but think about this: you will be able to pay $300,000 in 2009 for something that has been dreamt of-- and utterly impossible-- for the entire span of recorded human history. That is super f***ing badass.

In other news, Branson has licensed Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne technology for his vehicle fleet.

In other other news, it looks like this Wednesday Rutan’s crew will start making the actual non-beta-test flights that should win them the X-Prize.

The future is now, folks. 


Posted by Johno on 09/27/04 at 07:48 PM
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Oh, you mean Tommy AxemurTHerer!

Darwin Award Contender

Time Magazine is reporting that Yusuf “Cat Stevens” Islam was deported thanks to a spelling error. If this is true, 1) all the justifications in the world for why he had to go are moot, as Mr. Islam (still lovin’ that name!) isn’t the droid they were looking for, and 2) if the Homeland Security Clownshow is still stuck in the stone age with respect to how to spell “foreign” names, and using that stone-age technology agin’ good and bad guys alike, they don’t even deserve to be labelled “orwellian.”


Posted by Johno on 09/27/04 at 04:01 PM
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Caught with the meat in their mouths

Unmitigated Gall

...so to speak.

The RNC has ‘fessed up to being behind the mailing sent out last week to West Virginia Republicans. Remember? The one about how the bible will be Banned! and Gay Marriage will be Icky! and Allowed! if the Liberals win?

There goes the last shred of a chance that I was going to endorse even a single GOP candidate this year. Forget it, guys. You lost me.

(on the same page: Hey Democrats: John Kerry? Are you effing kidding me?!?)

[wik] I love the New York Times. In true natural-born elitist fashion, they dug up the nuttiest people possible to close their expose’ article on Republican perfidy. I call it gilding the lily when the story itself is damning enough. Check out the capper:

But Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, argued, “We have the First Amendment in this country which should protect churches, but there is no question that this is where some people want to go, that reading from the Bible could be hate speech.”

Still, Mr. Land questioned the assertion that Democrats might ban the whole Bible. “I wouldn’t say it,” he said. “I would think that is probably stretching it a bit far.”

Witness as the redneck furrows his brow in an effort to concentrate! Aren’t you glad you’re not like him, dear reader of the Grey Lady?

[also wik] Let’s be perfectly clear about this next part.  The RNC was, so to speak, caught with the meat in their mouths and liking it. The statement about the mailing from RNC spokesflack Christine Iverson contained no apology but instead a defense of sorts. Sez Miz Iverson:

“When the Massachusetts Supreme Court sanctioned same-sex marriage and people in other states realized they could be compelled to recognize those laws, same-sex marriage became an issue. . . These same activist judges also want to remove the words ‘under God’ from the Pledge of Allegiance.”

How, exactly, does that ball of unsupported assertions, generic FUD, and outright lies clarify, explain, or excuse the mailing? ‘Cos I don’t see it. So far, I see one state that has ok’d gay marriage, many more very much against it (viz. Virginia, where gay couples have fewer rights than my cat), and one Defense of Marriage Act. On the other issue, I see one failed bid by a libertarian dickweed to get the Supreme Court to nix “Under God,” and an outrageous grandstanding conservative Republican timewaster of a bill stripping the SCOTUS of jurisdiction to hear any more such cases (real classy guys. I’m sure Abraham Lincoln, wherever he is, is damn proud.)

All I see is a lot of heat, no light, and a partisan political process that every day wallows deeper into the muck.


Posted by Johno on 09/27/04 at 02:26 PM
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This Week in Exemplary Human Behavior…

Just So You Know

For the week ending 27Sep04

Spotlight Iraq: No doubt about it: terrorists aren’t just crazy in the head- they’re crazy FOR heads.  Last week foot soldiers of the Religion of Peace killed three Iraqi kurds, possibly two Italian women, and at least two Americans by decapitation.  I’m just another kafir but I don’t remember anything in my Penguin pocket Koran about chopping people’s heads off to please God. 

And maybe there’s something in the water over there, but beheading might not just be for wild-eyed jihadis anymore.  Iraq Prime Minister Iyad Allawi reportedly threatened overfed firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr to cease his Najaf-based recalcitrance or lose his own unlovely head.  If the PM threatens it, does that imply it’s policy?

Spotlight America: Americans don’t traditionally take heads off but will kick them in on occasion, as demonstrated by an unnamed attacker at a Toby Keith show in Columbus last week.  Seems some wholesome citizen took exception to an “Operation Iraqi Freedom” t shirt worn by a soldier on convalescent leave from Iraq.  As he left the show, the bantam weight soldier (5’6, 130) was set upon from behind by a 6’, 200 pounder.  He never knew what hit him, and has no recollection of having his head kicked in while lying unconscious on the ground.  Oh, and fellow upstanding citizens in the vicinity of the fracas did nothing whatsoever to assist, except the girl the young troopy was with, who finally got into the fight.  Although he had made progress is recuperating from the injuries that sent him home in the first place, he is now also recovering from a concussion and broken nose. 

Note to unknown assailant:  funny how you picked a busted-up guy half your mass to ambush, you fucking turd.  Pray the cops find you before agents of the Ministry do. 

And speaking of people who’d like to cave your head in, a clutch of neo-nazis (not to be confused with the long defunct paleo-nazis) held an anti-war demonstration in Pennsylvania on Saturday.  Staged at the Valley Forge memorial (no specific reason is given for that choice of site), the demo decried the ongoing war in Iraq.  I had just sort of assumed that white supremacists would be pleased with the opportunity to kill brown people, and therefore be supportive of the war.  But in a worldview founded in a well-thumbed copy of the Protocols of the Edlers of Zion and fed by Al-Jazeera, superior white minds oppose the conflict on the grounds that it’s “Israel’s War”.  I wouldn’t think that neo-nazis are necessarily anti-war; they’re just anti-this particular-war. 

Maybe they’ll show at the next peace rally on the Mall...?


Posted by on 09/27/04 at 02:13 PM
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Friday, September 24, 2004

The past is a different, much flyer, country

Just So You Know

This summer while watching the Olympics, I was stunned to be reminded that the women’s marathon event was a recent addition, and that as recently as 1984 there was heated debate over whether women should run marathons-- indeed whether women were actually physically capable of doing so.

When women’s marathoner Gabrielle Andersen-Scheiss approached the finish line in Los Angeles in 1984, a half hour out of the lead, she was staggering horribly as if on the edge of death. Doctors very nearly removed her from the race, partly out of medical opinion, partly out of a vestigial chivalry that Title IX has almost completely obliterated.

Today, in the wake of Title IX, it is literally unthinkable that such a debate would take place. Doctors let atheletes tell them when they’re done, and chivalry, where sport is concerned, is thankfully dead. Women run the hell out of marathons now, doing the murderous Boston course in 2:20 flat. The way the world works has changed so much in twenty years-- all of which I’ve been alive and sentient for-- that 1984 is in many ways totally unrecognizable. If you want a real future shock moment, watch “9 to 5” again, and look for the rooms full of secretaries-- all women-- at typewriters. You don’t see that real often any more.

I only bring this up because I often wish I was born thirty years sooner than I was so that I could have rocked it like this: image

You just can’t do that any more, unless it’s Halloween or you’re Snoop Dogg. Something important has been lost. 


Posted by Johno on 09/24/04 at 03:24 PM
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A Herkimer Battle Jitney?! That’s the finest nonlethal combat vehicle ever made!

That Buck Rogers Stuff

I guarantee you when the giant space robots are our masters, the will use this new super-keen future-is-now nonlethal pain ray technology to keep us from escaping their tungsten mines.

Why, oh why do our military men insist on making it easier for our enemies, the robots? 


Posted by Johno on 09/24/04 at 02:45 PM
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Deficits?  We don’t need no steenking deficits

Filthy Lucre

Something to raise the ire of our beloved Ross and the economic question, by way of relatively-new-to-blogging, just-moved-to-DC Clutch Pearls.

The idea shop’s subtitle, “Where the dismal science gets groovy” seems like an impossible claim, on the order of Kerry’s idea that Republicans will reinstitute the draft.  But reading a few of the posts over there, it seems that they are making good their boast.


Posted by Buckethead on 09/24/04 at 04:13 AM
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My Teleprompter is Deadly

Entertainment

This is really, really goddamned funny.

[wik]Iowahawk’s list of suggested Kerry campaign slogans is also a bit of a hoot.  I liked these:

Projecting American Strength Through Intricately Complex Nuance

Those Atrocity Stories? Dude, I Was Just Shitting You

Fear Not, America, I Have Deigned to Lead You

The Next Time America is Attacked, I Promise To Open Up a Carafe of Whupass


Posted by Buckethead on 09/24/04 at 04:11 AM
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Thursday, September 23, 2004

Where have all the cool aliens gone?

That Buck Rogers Stuff

In regards to GeekLethal’s post, a necessary precursor to worrying about what to do once you’ve received a singing telegram from ET is worrying whether you have a telegraph machine to receive telegrams with.

I think that worrying about ET’s message is pointless.  It is clear that hyper-advanced aliens, wise with the knowledge of the eons, will completely endorse my worldview.  Therefore, to prepare for their arrival, attend to my words and all will be well.

The fact that reasonably thorough searches of the sky have completely failed to reveal the existence of radio broadcasting, Dan Rather in the sky aliens leads us to several potential scenarios, all of which rather undercut SETI as it currently exists.

1) The cool aliens don’t use radio.  If we are going to be accepted by our social betters, we must move beyond attempting to speak with a hick accent on the radio waves.  Quantum entanglement, even with our current, limited understanding of the laws of nature, holds open a possibility of FTL communication.  Other quantum high wierdness may also be infinitely more efficient than radio.  Some heretics even believe that relativity may be incomplete, and that gravity may propagate significantly faster than light.  We have only recently become even marginally technologically competent.  By galactic standards, we were born yesterday, and slept in late today for good measure.  Are we to imagine that radio is the ne plus ultra of communication techniques forever?

2) There are no aliens, cool or otherwise.  This would certainly explain why we haven’t gotten any dancing ape telegrams on the white house lawn.  It would be reassuring in some regards to know that we have the galaxy to ourselves.  Given the rate at which we have lately been discovering planets, its feels unlikely to me that there is no one else out there, anywhere.

3) There is some compelling reason that the aliens are not communicating at all.  Long time readers will know about the novel Killing Star, which set outs the Central Park analogy for life in the galaxy:

Imagine you’re alone and unarmed in Central Park at night.  From where you are, weapons are concealed and intentions hard to discern.  The very last thing you do is wander around shouting, “I’m here!  That could attract the attention of decidedly unsavory types.  What do you do?  You hunker down, keep quiet; and wait for a policeman to come round or for daylight and walk out of the park.  However, there are several unfortunate differences between the universe and Central Park:

  1. There’s no policeman
  2. You can’t leave the park
  3. Night never ends

If this scenario even remotely approximates reality, sending signals into space is just about the stupidest thing we could imagine doing.  It’s painting a bullseye on your chest, and screaming, “Shoot me!”

I don’t think that SETI is at all likely to detect any signals.  The energy cost to send a radio broadcast that would be coherent at distances greater than a few lightyears is absolutely enormous.  And if aliens are sending narrowcast sigals, we would only pick them up by the thinnest of chances. The only remotely plausible radio broadcast would be the nearby deathshout of a species that had been wacked a la Killing Star, and no longer had anything to lose.  At that stage, stealth is no longer a priority and having some memory of your existence better than no existence at all.

Life on this planet is scary enough.  I don’t think that life throughout the galaxy is going to be the big rock candy mountain, either.  As we develop the technology to start moving around outside the cradle, we will have to be more than a little cautious.


Posted by Buckethead on 09/23/04 at 10:03 PM
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Honey, There’s an Alien on the Phone… What Should I Tell Him?

That Buck Rogers Stuff

Sky and Telescope covers a recent conference at Hahvahd regarding the SETI program.

For the non-dorks among you...if there are any...SETI is the nifty-sounding acronym for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a decades-long research program devoted to finding evidence of an alien civilization.  In a nutshell, the plan is to search the skies with ridiculously oversized dishes listening for signals of certain type and strength to conclude they originated from an alien world.  Conversely, an extraterrestrial society may one day be conducting similar experiments, and hear, say, Double Live Gonzo through the ether, and conclude that not only is there “alien” life out there, but it’s gonna kick your ass.

So this conference was held to discuss where the project is, what they’ve found (not much), what they’ve not found (everything else), how they’ll improve the search process, and the like.  One interesting twist was the faction that asks whether alien civilizations have been trying to reach us for centuries, but we are too ignorant to understand the means of communication.  I’m not talking crop circles here- kinda hard to believe that a civilization that can build interstellar conveyances would choose to express itself in corn- but subtle consistent signals that exist in frequencies or energies we’re only beginning to comprehend. 

What none of these people ask though, and which I find extremely unsettling, is what the holy hell we’re supposed to do the morning after we get a telegram from ET.  How about some conferences discussing the repercussions on our country, indeed our world, in that event?  What happens to our livelihoods, our foreign policy, our belief systems, our self perception, the day after Kang and Kodos get a listing in the phonebook?


Posted by on 09/23/04 at 06:14 PM
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The distant whap of black helicopters

It'll Be a Cold Day in Hell

Madness is incremental, and it’s so very hard (isn’t it?) to know when you’ve crossed the line from healthy paranoia into deranged ranting. Loyal reader #0017, EDog, is edging away while nodding politely at this skeptic, who believes that gmail, combined with Carnivore/Total Information Whatever They Call It Today*, will be the ruination of us all. He’s right… gmail is too creepy!

(As an added sop to insanity, why not give your obsessive tendencies a soothing backscratch with this fun game? Thanks again to Edog.)

[wik] *I have it on good authority that the “Total Information Awareness” program now appears in Congressional budget packages as “070220- Misc Funds 0688a: Puppies (cute).”


Posted by Johno on 09/23/04 at 03:36 PM
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