Wednesday Open Thread

WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Welcome, comrade, to the glorious revolution against the terrorist swine!

I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.

I have to admit getting a kick out of yesterday's psychadelic montage. Hope you weren't fritzed by it.

prisoner. "It's devastating to the Bush administration. The unanimous opinion even mocks Bush & Co.'s argument, comparing it to a nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll":

"The documents repeatedly describe those activities and relationships as having "reportedly" occurred, as being "said to" or "reported to" have happened, and as things that "may" be true or are "suspected of" having taken place. But in virtually every instance, the documents do not say who "reported" or "said" or "suspected" those things. Nor do they provide any of the underlying reporting upon which the documents' bottom-line assertions are founded, nor any assessment of the reliability of the reporting. Because of those omissions, the Tribunal could not and this court cannot assess the reliability of the assertions in the documents. [...]We merely reject the government's contention that it can prevail by submitting documents that read as if they were indictments or civil complaints, and that simply assert as facts the elements required to prove that a detainee falls within the definition of enemy combatant. To do otherwise would require the courts to rubber-stamp the government's charges..."

And let's remember that the DC Court of Appeals is just about the most conservative packed Appeals Courts out there. I guess there is hope for our judicial system yet. Not accepting "It's true because I say it's true" is the first step towards government by adults, not by children. The idea that any Attorney representing the United States would make a claim like this is just completely astounding. But I then remember that I'm talking about the bush43 Administration. Then it all makes sense again.

Whatever you think of the man or the method, you will gain information from this article and the accompanying video.

Edit: put this in the "Of interest" block on the right nav bar.

Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson

in This Modern World.

Oh the horrors! Can this really be how it ends?

Let's get this open thread packed with fascinating discussion!

Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson

CNN article here :

Jordan has moved 10 times in the last three years, but his most unsettling news came when his mother recently sat him down and asked, "How would you feel about your dad going to Iraq?"

"My heart kind of dropped. I was like, 'Wow,'" the 15-year-old boy told CNN.

His stepfather, Marine Gunnery Sgt. Lester Williams, 35, is preparing for his first deployment to Iraq and told his stepson that he needs to be strong over the next year.

My wife reads some boards about babies and showed me a picture yesterday of a returning soldier who was meeting his new baby for the first time.

The military life has got to be tough on families under the best of circumstances.

Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson

pressure)

Obsessive fuel savers risk safety for economy

I think calling 911 upon seeing such behavior is warranted.

"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR

U.S. terror fears at post-9/11 low, poll shows - Whatever you think of President Bush, he's done a great job of safeguarding our country.

What metric would you like to use to measure that? Number of deaths caused by terrorist action during various presidential watches? Property damage?

Seems like from an objective view Bush's tenure has actually been our worst ever in terms of suffering damage from terrorists.

I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.

The computer game industry has been taking a page from the music industry.

Unfortunately that page is titled "How to alienate your customers and shoot yourself in the foot. Repeatedly."

The last few years we've seen increasingly intrusive and obnoxious efforts by computer game industries to prevent piracy. Requirements that you be online to authenticate every time you play or every few days as well as anti-piracy software that is drastically intrusive in terms of your computer OS and personal information are becoming standard for big name titles.

Which is stupid since such measures only serve to given very good reason to pirate the games so as to avoid them.

Personally I have no regard for the concept of Intellectual Property. Consequently whether I buy the retail version of a game/music/movie or get a much cheaper pirated cop[y generally depends on how much I want to support the specific industry. Crap like SecuROM makes it much more likely I'll get myself a pirate copy of Spore instead of paying to give myself bigger hassles.

I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.

You might have seen today's WaPo article by David Iglesias titled Spy Games in Iran . But what's even more astounding is the Iran Captures U.S. Spies article where it says:

"He said the Iranians had recently captured several dissident Iranian operatives who had been recruited by U.S. military officers inside Iraq and then sent into Iran. The Iranians, whose intelligence network inside Iraq is pervasive, surveilled the meeting, then followed the agents across the border and seized them."

Then he links to a Christian Sceince Monitor article by Shlomo Ben-Ami (ex Israeli Foreign Minister) and Trita Parsi who say serious diplomacy, not military action, will bring regional security" to the Middle East:

"Even the most successful bombing raid would leave Iran with some nuclear capability. At best, proponents of this option admit, bombing would set back the [nuclear] program five years. During that time the [White House] expectation is that the Iranian people miraculously would unseat the country's ruling clergy and dismantle the nuclear program permanently."

We are being led by children I tell ya.

Portland General Electric has begun leading the charge for mass adoption of plug-in hybrid-electric cars in Oregon.

The utility plans to install 12 electric-vehicle charging stations in Portland and Salem by September as part of a demonstration project to develop the transportation infrastructure needed to support electric vehicles. The project will also help the utility anticipate the demand plug-in cars might place on the region’s electric grid and design smart grid systems to help even out variability in wind and solar resources.

“We’re not creating a new division or a new product; we’re preparing for what might become a sea change in the electric vehicle market,” said Bill Nicholson, vice president of customers and economic development for PGE. “As we understand how manufacturers are going to deploy these vehicles, we’ll know better if it becomes a huge focus of our utility or if it will be delayed based on the manufacturer response.”

PGE is working with the Oregon Department of Transportation and other partners on the demonstration project, which will design standards for charging stations and develop a public awareness campaign to prepare for mass adoption of plug-in cars over the next two to five years.

“The biggest drawback for people considering switching to electric vehicles is the range of those vehicles and having certainty about being able to charge up if they’re going to travel,” said Art James, a project director with ODOT’s Innovative Partnership Program. “If we could establish a network where they can top off the charge, we’ll facilitate adoption.”

About 400 electric cars are registered in Oregon, comprising slightly more than 1 percent of all cars in the state, according to the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles. But ODOT anticipates electric car ownership will grow dramatically in the next two to five years when manufacturers begin mass producing plug-in hybrids.

Story

The statement that there are 400 hybrids and that is 1% of cars in the state is an error. Oregon has 4 million motor vehicles, not 40,000. I can't say whether the error is the 400 number or the 1% number. Hopefully the former.

I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.

On Wikipedia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_Comments/GoRight

:)

Who knows what's gonna happen.

Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree