Monday, July 28, 2008
Torture Memo Shields Interrogators
Government Memo Says Even Brutal Actions OK if Done in 'Good Faith'
Illustration by: Matt Mahurin
One of the most important building blocks in the Bush administration's apparatus of torture became public Thursday.
An Aug. 1, 2002 memorandum from the Justice Dept.'s Office of Legal Counsel to the Central Intelligence Agency instructed the agency's interrogators on specific interrogation techniques for use on Al Qaeda detainees in its custody. Most of the 17-page memo is blacked out and unreadable. But at least one of those techniques is waterboarding, the process of pouring water into the mouth and nostrils of a detainee under restraint until drowning occurs.
"This is a critical piece of the story," said Jameel Jaffer, head of the national security project at the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained the memorandum under a Freedom of Information Act filing. "This is the most explicit statement out there that the CIA waterboarded prisoners becaused the Justice Dept. authorized them to do so."
Illustration by: Matt Mahurin
Herman Schwartz, professor of law at American University, said the legal advice on display in the memorandum amounted to "out-and-out-fraud."
Today, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, who has been adjudicating the ACLU's extensive declassification lawsuit against the U.S. government for the past four years, ordered the memorandum released. Signed by Jay Bybee, then the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, the memorandum is heavily influenced by the legal theories of Bybee's then-subordinate, John Yoo. Torture-watchers have long referred to the memo, which congressional inquiries identified years ago, as "Yoo-Bybee II."
That's because Yoo-Bybee I, written around the same time as this document, contended that it would only be illegal for interrogators to inflict pain upon detainees equivalent to "organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death." Anything short of that standard, that memo argued, was legal under the Federal Torture Statute. This newly declassified memo was an attempt at practicality: given the legal standard laid out in the first memo, Yoo-Bybee II advised the CIA on specific interrogation techniques that were now permissible.
http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/torture-memos
Sphere: Related ContentAl Franken Attacked by Republican Hypocrite Opponent — And It’s Bad
by Trish
Say you're Al Franken. Your idol was Sen. Paul Wellstone, a man who exemplified what was right with America and with America's Democratic system of government. But Paul Wellstone died, and his alter-ego from hell took his seat: a man whose only ideas are those placed in his head by the Bush neocons, who voted with Bush on everything — especially everything Iraq-related — but the surge. And he probably only voted against that because he was looking at re-election and knew the subject of the ongoing occupation, which he facilitated at every turn, might come up.
Bad incumbents through the ages have used the same tactic when they have only a poor record of their own (except for bringing back hockey, but that's another subject) on which to run: ATTACK! It doesn't get much worse than this ad from Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman:
Coleman's going the old, "It doesn't have to be true, it just has to sound like it is," one better by keeping his smears so vague it's hard to even know what the ad is really saying, let alone how to refute it. But it gives people the impression that Al Franken has done some very bad things, especially if your preferred source of news is porky white guys in shirts from three different bowling leagues.
We all know Al Franken had a career before he ran for office. We also know, from listening to him on Air America, that he gets it, and that he could help Congress reclaim its place as a co-equal branch of government.
The funny thing is, until 1996, Norm Coleman was a Democrat. When he was 20, Coleman celebrated his birthday at Woodstock. His college roommate, lawyer Norman Kent, recently took Coleman to task for hypocrisy on his past pot-smoking after Coleman toed the Republican line about the war on drugs.
My friend Norman,
Coleman during a Vietnam War protest
Years ago, in a lifetime far away, you did not oppose the legalization of marijuana…
Sure, we had to tape the doors shut, burn incense and open the windows…yet we grew up okay, without the help of the Office of National Drug Control Policy's advice.
We grew up to become lawyers. Our other friends, as you go down the list, are doctors, professors, parents, political consultants and professionals. No one ever got cancer from smoking pot or diabetes from using a joint.
You never said then that pot was dangerous. What was scary then, and is as frightening now, is when national leaders become voices of hypocrisy, harbingers of the status quo, and protect their own position instead of the public good…
How about standing up and saying: "I, Norm Coleman, smoked pot in 1969." That "I am not a gang member, a drug addict or a criminal." How about saying: "I was able to responsibly integrate my prior pot use into my life, and still succeed on my own merits."
How about standing up not only for who you are, but who you were?
Nas Delivers Petition to Fox News, Says Network Is “Scared”
About four hours after the announcement that his controversial, politically charged ninth album was number one in the country, Nas was on a small podium in front of Fox News headquarters in New York City protesting what he sees as racist attacks against Black Americans and presidential candidate Barack Obama. In a brief prepared statement, the multi-platinum rapper pointed out examples of what he and ColorOfChange see as a long racist smear campaign against the Obama family: The onscreen graphic that referred to Michelle Obama as the Senator's "baby mama"; Bill O'Reilly casually using the phrase "lynching party" to refer to attacks on the Senator's wife; referencing to the couple's infamous fist thump as a "terrorist fist jab." Said Nas, "Fox poisons this country every time they air racist propaganda and try to call it news. This should outrage every American that Fox uses hateful language to talk about the person that may be the first black president."
The rapper stood next to 19 neatly stacked cardboard boxes, with the number 620,127 taped to the side of each one — over 600,000 signatures gathered by ColorOfChange demanding that network president Roger Ailes "find a solution to address racial stereotyping and hate-mongering before it hits the airwaves." Fox rejected the petitions, but Brave New Films says that Comedy Central's The Colbert Report will accept them instead.
T. Boone Pickens may be supporting renewable 'energy' but gaining a water monopoly is his real goal
By TOM DANEHY
T. Boone Pickens is either best known as a corporate raider in the 1980s or as the buffoon who shelled out $3 million to fund the Swift Boat ads that killed John Kerry's presidential candidacy in 2004. (Pickens has recently been in the news for reneging on a promise to pay $1 million to anyone who could prove that the aforementioned ads were false. It was proven, but the cheap bastard refused to pay.)
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Now Pickens has launched a media campaign in which he starts off by saying, "Ah've bin an oalman all mah lahf." He then says that we're facing an oil crisis "that we can't drill our way out of." (I'll bet him a million dollars that he doesn't know that you're not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition.)
He says that he has a plan to help make America energy-independent, and he wants you to check it out at pickensplan.com. What it amounts to is that he wants us to use wind energy to generate electricity, and use the natural gas that we'd save to power automobiles.
One's first reaction is that, wow, politics does make strange bedfellows. Somebody had better warn Al Gore, because cheap people like Pickens tend to hog the covers on cold nights.
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/Opinion/Content?oid=oid:113228
Gitmo prosecutor repeats al Qaeda deputy's claim: Flight 93 was shot down on 9/11
GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba, July 22 (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden's driver knew the target of the fourth hijacked jetliner in the Sept. 11 attacks, a prosecutor said on Tuesday in an attempt to draw a link between Salim Hamdan and the al Qaeda leadership in the first Guantanamo war crimes trial. Hamdan's lawyer said in opening statements that the Yemeni, held for nearly seven years before his trial, was just a paid employee of the fugitive al Qaeda leader, a driver in the motor pool who never joined the militant group or plotted attacks on America.
But prosecutor Timothy Stone told the six-member jury of U.S. military officers who will decide Hamdan's guilt or innocence that Hamdan had inside knowledge of the 2001 attacks on the United States because he overheard a conversation between bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
"If they hadn't shot down the fourth plane it would've hit the dome," Stone, a Navy officer, said in his opening remarks, repeating Bin Laden's deputy's claim.
http://rawstory.com//news/2008/Was_Flight_93_shot_down_on_0723.html
Sphere: Related ContentRNC Continues Shameless, Hypocritical Attacks
In their continuing attempts to distort Senator Barack Obama's strong pro-Israel record, the Republican National Committee (RNC) insisted that Obama has an anti-Israel approach to Jerusalem. They could not be further from the truth. Not only is the RNC attack inaccurate, but it is the height of hypocrisy. In reality, Obama's position on Jerusalem is in line with the bipartisan consensus among United States leaders and consistent with the position of Senator John McCain.
According to McCain's top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, McCain says that we should not "second-guess" the Israeli government when it comes to Israel and, "Senator McCain has said that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel…if a democratic government of Israel chooses to accept an alteration of that status, he's certainly not going to second-guess a democratic government of Israel," (NPR, July 15, 2008.)
A careful reading of Obama's remarks as quoted in the July 23, 2008 RNC release entitled, "RNC: Obama's Jewish Divide" reveals there was "no shift in policy or backtracking in policy."
If you look at what happened, there was no shift in policy or backtracking in policy. We just had phrased it poorly in the speech. That has happened and will happen to every politician. You're not always gonna hit your mark in terms of how you phrase your policies. But my policy hasn't changed, and it's been very consistent. It's the same policy that Bill Clinton has put forward, and that says that Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel, that we shouldn't divide it by barbed wire, but that, ultimately that is a final status issue that has to be resolved between the Palestinians and the Israelis." (Obama, CBS News, 7/22/08)
Republicans should be embarrassed to make such blatantly misleading and hypocritical statements. Yet, when it comes to Obama, Israel, and the Jewish community, it is clear that McCain's allies have reaffirmed they are completely shameless in their smearing of Obama.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Where your gas money is going
The Palm Islands in Dubai. New Dutch dredging technology was used to create these massive man made islands. They are the largest artificial islands in the world and can be seen from space. Three of these Palms will be made with the last one being the largest of them all.
http://www.dubai-architecture.info/DUB-GAL1.htm
Sphere: Related ContentFelons Seeking Bush Pardon Near a Record
by: Charlie Savage
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President Bush attends a turkey-pardoning ceremony on Thanksgiving in 2006. In the next few months, the Bush administration will decide whether to grant pre-emptive pardons to officials involved in questionable "counterterrorism" practices, to ensure that those officials will not be vulnerable to prosecution under future administrations. (Photo: whitehouse.gov)
Washington - Felons are asking President Bush for pardons and commutations at historic levels as he nears his final months in office, a time when many other presidents have granted a flurry of clemency requests.
Among the petitioners is Michael Milken, the billionaire former junk bond king turned philanthropist, who is seeking a pardon for his 1990 conviction for securities fraud, the Justice Department said. Mr. Milken sought a pardon eight years ago from President Bill Clinton, and submitted a new petition in June.
In addition, prominent federal inmates are asking Mr. Bush to commute their sentences. Among them are Randy Cunningham, the former Republican congressman from California; Edwin W. Edwards, a former Democratic governor of Louisiana; John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban; and Marion Jones, the former Olympic sprinter.
The requests are adding to a backlog of nearly 2,300 pending petitions, most from "ordinary people who committed garden-variety crimes," said Margaret Colgate Love, a clemency lawyer.
http://www.truthout.org/article/bush-administration-does-not-rule-out-pre-emptive-pardons
Russia contemplates using Cuba to refuel nuclear bombers
Russia denies reports in Kremlin mouthpiece
· Talk highlights Russian anger at US missile defence 
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· Talk highlights Russian anger at US missile defence
A Russian Tupolev-160 bomber during a combat training flight near the Engels air force base in the Saratov region of Russia, about 700 km (450 miles) southeast of Moscow. Photograph: AP
Russia is considering the use of bases in Cuba for its nuclear bombers, in a move that revives memories of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, according to reports in a Russian newspaper.
Russian military sources said that Moscow is contemplating using Cuba as a refuelling base for its nuclear-bomb carrying aircraft. The move would be in retaliation for the Bush administration's plan to site a missile defence shield in Europe.
Russia objects vehemently to the Pentagon's plan. It says the US's proposed system in Poland and the Czech republic – which formally agreed a deal with Washington last week – poses a direct threat to Russia and its security.
According to a report in Monday's Izvestiya newspaper - which closely reflects Kremlin thinking - Russia now wants to use Cuba as a base for its long-range Tu-160 and Tu-95 strategic nuclear bombers. Citing a "highly-placed military source", the paper said discussions had taken place.
Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?
John Moore/Getty Images
POPPY FIELDS FOREVER
A crop in Helmand Province in 2006. An unlikely coalition of corrupt Afghan officials, timorous Europeans, blinkered Pentagon officers and the Taliban has made poppy cultivation stubbornly resistant to eradication.
Over the next two years I would discover how deeply the Afghan government was involved in protecting the opium trade — by shielding it from American-designed policies. While it is true that Karzai's Taliban enemies finance themselves from the drug trade, so do many of his supporters. At the same time, some of our NATO allies have resisted the anti-opium offensive, as has our own Defense Department, which tends to see counternarcotics as other people's business to be settled once the war-fighting is over. The trouble is that the fighting is unlikely to end as long as the Taliban can finance themselves through drugs — and as long as the Kabul government is dependent on opium to sustain its own hold on power.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/magazine/27AFGHAN-t.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Sphere: Related ContentShell Revives Age Old Lime To Oceans Project In A Bid To Combat Global Warming
by It's been a while since the last big to-do about adding limestone to the planet's oceanic waters, but researchers sponsored by oil company Shell are saying that they've found the ultimate solution this time.
Adding limestone extracts to the surface of the planet's oceans will dramatically lower the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere. This is because adding lime to seawater creates an increase in alkalinity, which in turn improves the water's ability to scrub the air clean of carbon.
As early as the 1990s scientists have been working on similar plans. But most projects ran into trouble because the logistics of getting masses of limestone to certain locations was calculated to generate even more CO2. Various other problems were also cited, including the costs of actually extracting lime from limestone.
But the Shell sponsored feasibility study, recently reported in Chemistry & Industry magazine is promising. The project's coordinator, Gilles Bertherin, cites potentially massive ecological benefits from adding limestone to the waters. "Adding calcium hydroxide to seawater will also mitigate the effects of ocean acidification, so it should have a positive impact on the marine environment," according to Bertherin. Corven, as a management consultant, calculated that by using local means wherever possible, the plan is going to be feasible.
John McCain, please log on
The crusty ol' Repub says he has no clue how to use a computer. Isn't that cute?
You know what's funny and cute and just a little bit sad? Wacky old pre-industrial war-hungry guys admitting they don't know a computer from a microwave oven, a hyperlink from a heart med, can't turn on one of those newfangled PC things if his life depended on it and/or he wanted to see what his weird tattooed bi-curious grandson is posting on his MySpace home docking station whateveryoucallit. Adorable!
Cuter still is when said wisecrackin' curmudgeon admits he depends on the wife to show him how it all works, to log on and open a browser and check e-mail and describe what it all might mean out there in Interweb Cybertown, as you get the distinct feeling the old guy has no idea what makes it go and believes all this crazy gizmongery is for troublemakin' whippersnappers anyway, as he pines for the days of teletype machines and prop aeroplanes. Charming!
Or, you know, maybe not. Because you know what's depressing and just a bit beyond sad? A serious presidential candidate — that is to say, yours — who thinks it's harmless that he's actually one of those guys, who admits he's a complete Luddite when it comes to computers and, by extension, most every aspect of modern multimedia and technology, except perhaps the exact specs of the nuke required to annihilate Iran and/or take out a big pile of "gooks."
See, word has gotten out. Your boy John McCain says has no clue how to work a computer. He's an admitted tech illiterate, couldn't Google his way out of a DailyKos to save his Yahoo.
But here's the disturbing part: This confession of ignorance apparently bothers him and his campaign not at all, as they apparently believe any sort of tech know-how isn't really required to run our deeply busted-up ship of state, that you need no real firsthand experience with the most definitive technology of the past 100 years to make decisions that affect the entire planet. Go figure.
So then, the valid question: Is it a big deal? Should you care? Because McCain's I'm-just-a-clueless-old-guy comment has caused a bit a stir, with anyone with a functioning DSL line calling it a bit of an embarrassment, a bit like running for captain of the swim team while admitting all you know how to do is splash around in the bathtub. Gosh, Senator, don't you think you need just a passing understanding of the culture in which you live to qualify you to oversee the damnable place? Doesn't it help?
Maybe not. Maybe McCain's apologists are right, the POTUS really doesn't need to have a working knowledge of what hundreds of millions of people use every day to live, work, communicate, shop and blog and breed and porn and tube and book. Hell, just look at President Bush — still giggles every time Laura plugs in the air popcorn popper, has an Irish drinking song as a ringtone, enjoys a working grasp of the English language that borders on infantile. Really, who says a president has to be even modestly versed in the culture of his or her day? Or even passably competent?
But then, that's not really the point, is it? The point, of course, is about social interconnection. It's about understanding the basic workings of one of the most powerful, fundamental engines of modern society, its staggering impact and consequence and reach. To not use or comprehend computers and the Net in 2008 is to basically confess to your own cultural irrelevance.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/07/23/notes072308.DTL
Sphere: Related ContentA Textbook Case of Intolerance
Changing the world one schoolbook at a time.
Because they are so clearly designed for the convenience of large testing companies, I had always assumed that multiple-choice tests, the bane of any fourth grader's existence, were a quintessentially American phenomenon. But apparently I was wrong. According to a report put out by the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom last week, it seems that Saudi Arabians find them useful, too. Here, for example, is a multiple-choice question that appears in a recent edition of a Saudi fourth-grade textbook, Monotheism and Jurisprudence, in a section that attempts to teach children to distinguish "true" from "false" belief in god:
Q. Is belief true in the following instances:
a) A man prays but hates those who are virtuous.
b) A man professes that there is no deity other than God but loves the unbelievers.
c) A man worships God alone, loves the believers, and hates the unbelievers.
The correct answer, of course, is c). According to the Wahhabi imams who wrote this textbook, it isn't enough just to worship god or just to love other believers—it is important to hate unbelievers as well. By the same token, b) is also wrong. Even a man who worships god cannot be said to have "true belief" if he loves unbelievers.
http://www.slate.com/id/2195684/
Sphere: Related ContentSupply-Side Education
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What explains the growing gap in wages?
In a 1996 television interview that was partly shot in an elementary-school computer lab, Laura D'Andrea Tyson, who was then chair of Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, tried to explain rising inequality in America.
"In the early 1970s," Tyson said, "a college graduate earned something like 45 percent more than a high-school graduate. Today a college graduate earns 84 percent more than a high-school graduate. What's happened is the technology has increased the demands for higher skills."
Computers did it. Among both Democrats and Republicans, that is one of the most frequently cited explanations for the post-1975 spike in American wage inequality. As the story goes, information technology has transformed almost every job, increasing employers' thirst for workers with advanced skills and college credentials. In the lingo of economists, this is "skills-biased technological change."
But that story is at best a half-truth, according to a new book by two professors of economics at Harvard University. The authors, Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, don't deny that American employers' demand for skills has been rising. But they say that that demand has been rising at a roughly constant rate for the last century. Contrary to popular belief, they argue, the personal computer and the Internet have not caused a sharp leap in employers' demand for skill.
So if demand doesn't explain the recent rise in inequality, what does? Look to the supply side of the equation, Goldin and Katz say: America simply isn't educating its citizens the way it used to.
http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i46/46b01001.htm
Sphere: Related ContentVal Kilmer proclaims himself 3rd best Batman of all-time
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| July 24th, 2008 Batman fever swept the world and here on News Groper, we had not one, but four Batman-related posts. The best of the batch? Val Kilmer's "Christian Bale's arrest catapults me to 3rd best Batman." Read that and these other great posts...  Oh yeah, well I've met with important leaders too by John McCain Top Gun 2: Like TG1 but with more volleyball scenes by Tom Cruise Christian Bale's arrest catapults me to 3rd best Batman by Val Kilmer I want to be Barack Obama when I grow up by Nouri al-Maliki 'The Dark Knight' needs more dark meat by Samuel L. Jackson Phish fans are no longer allowed at my concerts by John Mayer Regards, The News Groper Editors | |
| News Groper is a network of fake parody blogs. | |
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Torn apart by war, kept apart by suspicion
By Steve Lannen
slannen@herald-leader.com
Losi Grodya works two jobs, has a driver's license, is working on a community college degree and is readying to take her U.S. citizenship exam.
Despite all she has accomplished since settling in Lexington as a refugee from her native Democratic Republic of Congo nearly six years ago, she feels helpless when she talks on the phone with her daughters. Their home has been a Rwandan refugee camp for the past four years.
"They ask me when they are coming. Why is it taking so long? They tell me since I am in America, I must be able to do something to get them to come, but I've tried everything I can," Grodya said. "I just want them to come here so we can all be together again. ... But I can't even do that."
Her daughters, who as of late January were approved by U.S. officials to join her in Lexington as refugees, have seen their cases caught up in a post-9/11 provision in the Patriot Act that bars people from entering the United States if suspected of aiding a terrorist group.
Known as the material support bar, the law was also at the center of a high-profile case in April in which a Transylvania University student faced deportation to his native Sudan. Authorities said that because Lino Nakwa was kidnapped as a 12-year-old and spent a month in the training camp of a rebel group considered terrorists by the U.S. government, he was ineligible for a green card.
After a letter-writing campaign and intervention by Kentucky elected officials in Washington, Nakwa's case is waiting to be reviewed by Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
After months of delay, Grodya learned last week that her daughters are suspected of providing material support to a terrorist group. But she doesn't know precisely what they are suspected of doing.
http://www.kentucky.com/181/story/466751.html
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