Human Rights Watch is Watching

Human Rights Watch has just released a new report on abuses by the US Army: “No Blood, No Foul”: Soldiers’ Accounts of Detainee Abuse in Iraq. [If you can't get it at the previous link, try here.]

Obsidian Wings has a great post about this. OW quotes:

Some of the [Powerpoint] slides were about the laws of war, the Geneva Convention, but it was kind of a starting-off point for them to kind of spout off, you know: why we don’t have to follow these Geneva Convention articles and so forth. Like, you know, inhumane and degrading treatment, well, this specifically relates to POWs, so we don’t have to do this. So basically, we can do inhumane and degrading treatment. [Emphasis added.]

And then they went on to the actual treatment itself, what we were doing, what we’d signed off on and those types of things: cold water and nudity, strobe lights, loud music—that’s not inhumane because they’re able to rebound from it.

So, we can do inhumane and degrade treatment, even though this isn't! So, either way, we're covered!!

Yeah, we're covered, all right. In the same mud and shit and dishonor as those we maltreat.

Obsidian ends on a hopeful note, a reminder that we -- America "we" -- contain multitudes: The horrible things in this report--yes, they are part of what America is, now. But so are the human rights workers who wrote it. So are the soldiers who came forward. So is every citizen who decides this has to end.

Let's all be citizens who decide it has to end.

Oh, I feel so safe now.

Marshals: Innocent People Placed On 'Watch List' To Meet Quota Marshals Say They Must File One Surveillance Detection Report, Or SDR, Per Month.

Protests in London

Israel Kills More In Lebanon: Media Black Out Protests

Senator Inhofe is Blind to the Truth

Because it's so damn inconvenient for him, isn't it?

Sen. Inhofe: ‘Gore Is Full of Crap,’ ‘All Recent Science…Confirms This Thing Is A Hoax’

You sure about that, Senator? Because there's an awful lot of recent science says it ain't.

Maybe if he wasn't using fiction authors as expert witnesses, this would be more obvious.

Orcinus on Eliminationism

The Origins of "eliminationism"

The eliminationist mind-set that characterized virtually all who spoke out on the "Jewish Problem" from the end of the eighteenth century onward was another constant in Germans' thinking about Jews. For Germany to be properly ordered, regulated, and, for many, safeguarded, Jewishness had to be eliminated from German society. What "elimination" -- in the sense of successfully ridding Germany of Jewishness -- meant, and the manner in which this was to be done, was unclear and hazy to many, and found no consensus during the period of modern German antisemitism. But the necessity of the elimination of Jewishness was clear to all. It followed from the conception of the Jews as alien invaders of the German body social. If two people are conceived of as binary opposites, with the qualities of goodness inhering in one people, and those of evil in the other, then the exorcism of that evil from the shared social and temporal space, by whatever means, would be urgent, an imperative. "The German Volk," asserted one antisemite before the midpoint of the century, "needs only to topple the Jew" in order to become "united and free."

Of course, I'm struck in that passage by how easily one could replace "Jewishness" with "liberalism" and "liberals" in much of the current environment -- as well as a number of other targets for right-wing elimination, particularly illegal immigrants.'

As am I.

NASA Mission Statement

NASA's mission statement changed oh-so-quietly. NASA’s Goals Delete Mention of Home Planet

From 2002 until this year, NASA’s mission statement, prominently featured in its budget and planning documents, read: “To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers ... as only NASA can.”

In early February, the statement was quietly altered, with the phrase “to understand and protect our home planet” deleted. In this year’s budget and planning documents, the agency’s mission is “to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.”

...

Several NASA researchers said they were upset that the change was made at NASA headquarters without consulting the agency’s 19,000 employees or informing them ahead of time.

As usual. Why do publicly what you can do secretly? That's the White House motto.

Gateway Drug? Not really.

Gateway to Nowhere? The evidence that pot doesn't lead to heroin.

I never saw much of a connection -- other than risk-taking -- between the two myself. One is a cigarette type thing, eminently familiar, the other, a Big Scary Honking Needle, And You Don't Know Where It's Been.

The federal government's last National Survey on Drug Use and Health, conducted in 2004, counted about 97 million Americans who have tried marijuana, compared to 3 million who have tried heroin (166,000 had used it in the previous month). That's not much of a rush through the gateway. And a number of studies have demonstrated that your chances of becoming an addict are higher if addiction runs in your family, or if heroin is readily available in your community, or if you're a risk-taker. These factors can account for the total number of heroin addicts, which could make the gateway theory superfluous.

Cool!

Prehistoric humans roamed the world's largest desert for some 5,000 years, archaeologists have revealed.

...far from the inhospitable climate of today, the area was once semi-humid.

Between about 14,000 and 13,000 years ago, the area was very dry. But a drastic switch in environmental conditions some 10,500 years ago brought rain and monsoon-like conditions.

Nomadic human settlers moved in from the south, taking up residence beside rivers and lakes. They were hunter-gatherers at first, living off plants and wild game.

Eventually they became more settled, domesticating cattle for the first time, and making intricate pottery.

...

Humid conditions prevailed until about 6,000 years ago, when the Sahara abruptly dried out. There was then a gradual exodus of people to the Nile Valley and other parts of the African continent.

Gender Difference? Try "Discrimination".

Transgender Experience Led Stanford Scientist To Critique Gender Difference

I agree with Dr. Barres about the optimism thing. The scientific method is supposed to be objective and unbiased, so of course scientists tend to believe we're pure-intellect merit-based untouched-by-emotional-biases, etc., because we're educated to believe that's the way we're supposed to be in the field, and we want to believe in ourselves as having achieved that behavior. We're just blind to our faults, as humans tend to be.

Responsibility, Accountability, Democracy -- I'd love some, please

Bad Legal Advice For Bush

Now that Congress has been forced by the Supreme Court to partake in the separation of powers on the issues that Mr. Yoo cites — and others arising from this decision — I wonder (though may never find out) how the president feels about how his place in history has been marred by the advice of Messrs. Yoo, Addington, Gonzales, Ashcroft, Bybee, Flanigan and Haynes — these names should be remembered. Mr. Bush, clearly and deeply committed to protecting national security, has been crucially misled by his advisers, as have many other Americans.

I have two remarks to make:

1. The Bush Administration is headed by a fratboy incapable of taking responsibility for any action. Hell, when he falls off his mountain bike, he probably kicks it and says "stupid bicycle" under his breath. This attitude has permeated the Executive Branch.

2. This blame-the-counsellors approach is a very interesting one, and one quite evocative of a different ruler: a king. I had the good fortune to take a history class this past spring semester, on the development of human rights law. I found it quite eye-opening. One of the first things we read was the following:

Whereas the late King James the Second, by the assistance of divers evil counsellors, judges and ministers employed by him, did endeavour to subvert and extirpate the Protestant religion and the laws and liberties of this kingdom;

By assuming and exercising a power of dispensing with and suspending of laws and the execution of laws without consent of Parliament; [Emphasis added.]

That's the English Bill of Rights, from 1689. I had it pointed out to me by my professor at the time that this was/is par for the course in such documents' treatment of a monarch. Hands-off blaming the king directly, blame the counsellors instead.

And so, I think to myself, when George Washington became President of these United States, and settled on the simple, non-monarchical, "Mr. President" as the appropriate honorific for his position, one that refused to emulate the ways of European courts, oh, how things have changed, subtly and otherwise, from those days to today. Today we can read articles that both treat George Bush as though he were king, blaming the failings of his Administration on the advice of "evil counsellors, judges and ministers", and from a more modern perspective, perpetuating the Culture of Buck-Passing in constantly seeking excuses for those failings of the Bush Administration. They are, it seems, always Somebody Else's Fault.

Straight from the Horse's Mouth

Gonzales Says Bush Blocked Inquiry

This isn't about partisanship

This is about the fundamental structure of American government.

The Real Agenda NY Times. Worth registering to read.

How the Mighty Have Fallen

Once, we were the city on the hill. Now, this:

When Torture Isn't Good Enough

This is what America stands for in the 21st Century: the torture of innocent children to make their fathers confess.

50 Questions

50 Questions to Ask Republicans

1. What are the Top Seven best things that the Bush Administration has done?

2. Is the Iraq War is going well?

3. After three years thus far, when do you think Iraq might be able to "stand up" so that America can "stand down"?

4. For his part in the event, how would you rate the job the President did protecting New Orleans from devastation?

5. How do you think the rebuilding of New Orleans is going?

6. When Dick Cheney and the oil company and energy executives met in private to plan America's energy policy, how much of their goal was to benefit consumers?

7. Do you believe in the President's call for an Era of Personal Responsibility?

8. Since Republicans control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, how personally responsible are they for conditions in America today?

9. Why do you think they haven't been able to find anyone who can verify that George Bush ever showed up for National Guard duty in Alabama?

These are good questions, mostly, I think. Read 'em all.

Iraq Asks U.N. to Drop U.S. Immunity

Because right now, U.S. soldiers can't be held responsible for their actions in an Iraqi court.

Iraq says to ask U.N. to end US immunity