Keurigs used to be popular in waiting rooms of various consumer enterprises around here, but I've noticed they're being retired in favor of the good old coffeepot half full with several hours old sludge. I'm assuming $$ is the reason.
This was 100% politics and had little to do with much else. Why else release such inflammatory information AGAIN?
...
The really sad part though is that it is highly possible that the release of this report will cost Americans their lives. The world is a dangerous place, but it's stupid to poke the enemy or hand them such a public relations win as this will be. We will be lectured by Iran and North Korea for human rights abuses and you can bet ISIS will be happy to use this to recruit/conscript more help.
(sarcasm)Oh Yea! That's great.. (/sarcasm)
The really sad part is that people get so caught up in petty politics that they can't see that torturing people is immoral and ineffective and that maybe we should consider not fucking torturing people and hold ourselves to a higher standard than "other people are worse than us."
When you're in the authoritarian hierarchical decision making mode, if your superiors tell you torture isn't immoral and anyway we're not doing it, then it's Your Truth. (See also "It's Not Warming, and Besides, Nobody Denies It's Warming, Scientists are Fraudsters")
Ironically, Bush's first brush with fame in 1967, when he was quoted in the NYTImes saying branding people wasn't torture.
New York Times, Nov. 8, 1967, p. 80.
Branding Rite Laid to Yale Fraternity
New Haven, Nov. 7
...
The charges against Delta Kappa Epsilon were made last Friday in a Yale Daily News article that accused campus fraternities of carrying on “sadistic and obscene” initiation procedures.
The charge that has caused the most controversy on the Yale campus is that Delta Kappa Epsilon applied a “hot branding iron” to the small of the back of its 40 new members in ceremonies two weeks ago. A photograph showing a scab in the shape of the Greek letter Delta, approximately half an inch waid, appeared in the article.
A former president of Delta [said] that branding is done with a hot coathanger. But the former president, George Bush, a Yale senior, said that the resulting wound is “only a cigarette burn.”
Our nation spent a decade running a network of torture prisons, including Abu Grahib and Guantanamo bay, where cathartic biblical justice was and still is the prescription. Most of these prisoners cant be tried, and cant be released, for reasons that cant be told to the public. The actual details, while speculated for years by the public in quiet shame, were not only far worse than we could imagine but deliberately and baselessly shrouded in secrecy from the public. our intelligence agency actually lied to the govenment it was created to protect.
We can hardly keep our government open and when it is, its operation is ostensibly predicated on blanket covert surveillance against its own citizens. If anyone challenges it, we just lock them away forever and insist they are traitors. Our police operate entirely above the law, routinely executing unarmed citizens and exist in posession of several million dollars in military grade hardware from machine guns to tanks. the only thing "exceptional" about american exceptionalism these days is that we maintain the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet, and yet still havent managed to usher in the apocalypse despite a very public report on the sheer bumbling incompetence of the military divisions assigned to operate and maintain these weapons. The most devastating part about this as a foreigner, ill presume, is that a country of this level of dysfunction, porverty and animocity still controls such a disproportionate level of wealth, power, and influence.
Well, yeah. it's because God loves us, for our Freedom and Liberty and Godly Goodness.
I still remember a GOP debate during the primaries. The moderator asked for a show of hands, who would approve torture to save american lives. The camera slowly pans past all the candidates with their hands up. And then there's John McCain on the end with what can only be described as a horrified expression. I felt sorry for the guy that day, there in front of him were some of his closest colleagues and presumably a few friends saying that the torture the Vietcong did to him was not only justifiable but in fact justified from the perpetrators point of view.
Right now he's just glad the Cong didn't have blenders.
Additional sessions of rectal feeding and hydration followed. In addition to his hunger strikes, Majid Klian engaged in acts of self-harm that included attempting to cut his wrist on two occasions, an attempt to chew into his arm at the inner elbow, an attempt to cut a vein in the top of his foot, and an attempt to cut into his skin at the elbow joint using a filed toothbrush.
Page 115
You're implying that this was not useful information in the War On Terror. In fact, this was soon followed by Operation Smile, consisting of airdrops of huge numbers of filed toothbrushes over suspected enemy territory, followed by incessant bombardment with depressing Emo songs.
Heroes? They aren't heroes! They crawled back home in suburbia crying all the way to their office jobs and got a prescription for Prozac to deal with their PTSD while leaving the prisoners to be tortured and rot in Gitmo. Some heroes. A hero would have gotten a gun and stopped them from being tortured. A hero would have stood up on prime-time television and told the world what they saw in order to get it stopped. Being a hero means risking it all for doing something that believe so strongly in. Asking for a transfer to another division because you can't stand seeing someone tortured isn't not heroic.
The government works for the people? since when? A recent study demonstrated that the voters have NO power whatsoever. The corporates who pay the bribes... I mean donations are the ones that hold the power.
Those corporations which we give our salaries to in exchange for disposable crap, then complain that we have no power?
When you decide the morality of the situation is asymmetrical, don't expect the other guy to see your side of it.
This has been the main argument in favor of torture. "Do you think the terrorists treat their prisoners nicely? Then why should we be bound to any conventions we know they won't abide?" The argument has always been that "they" started it.
The morality of any of these situations has to be asymmetrical, and "our side" always needs to be the kinder, more honest, and more fair side. As soon as you demonstrate your willingness to use the unethical or evil techniques of your enemy, you lose any distinction from them.
"Honey? Why did you take a dump on the kitchen floor?"
"Do you think the enemy doesn't take a dump on the kitchen floor?"
If they could show that American lives were saved by torturing prisoners, would that make it okay?
If the prevailing attitude is "we as Americans will accept anything done to you to protect us", then in some people's minds, it may well be okay.
Of course, if America decides that torturing other people is OK then America has pretty much lost any form of moral high ground, and should expect other countries to torture Americans with impunity.
When you decide the morality of the situation is asymmetrical, don't expect the other guy to see your side of it.
So, hey, if a couple of your CIA agents or citizens end up getting offed or tortured, don't suddenly say that's unfair. Because it's kind of the bar you set.
Oh puhleeze, again. Half the public would be happy to torture every Arab we can get our hands on, if it would keep the price of gas down in the low $3.
Of course they will lie about the "success" of what they did.
Does it matter it if was successful? If they could show that American lives were saved by torturing prisoners, would that make it okay?
random liberal stock character: "No Jack, you can't cut the baby's stomach open to take out the disarming codes for the nuclear bombs that will go off in every American city within 60 seconds from now"
Jack Bauer: "Damn these liberals and their rules against cutting babies open! What do they know about what we have to do to keep them safe!"
Approximately half the viewing public: "Yeah, damn those liberals and their rules against cutting babies open! No wonder we haven't won yet! they need to see reality like it really is!"
According to the report, CIA officials did not disclose the methods of interrogation to White House officials, either by omission or blatantly lying about it. This is in reference to techniques that went beyond the initial executive order authorizing "enhanced interrogation techniques." Note that this report is not collected from sources friendly to the previous administration; if they could have thrown Bush under the bus, they would have.
The report states that Bush was informed in April 2006. In Sept and Oct 2006, he was still categorically denying that the US ever tortures anyone.
and in 2006, upon his learning of it, it was ramped down.
"Say fellas? You think we can ramp down the shoving of pureed food up prisoners' asses a little bit? The screaming is starting to keep Laura awake at night and somebody keeps stealing the mashed peas out of the White House fridge. "
"There is no -- I repeat, no -- cannibalism in the Royal Navy. And when I say none, I mean that there is a certain amount."
"Dear Sir, I am glad to hear that your studio audience disapproves of the last skit as strongly as I. As a naval officer I abhor the implication that the Royal Navy is a haven for cannibalism. It is well known that we now have the problem relatively under control,"
-Monty Python
Also, waterboarding was done on 3 prisoners, though the media would have you believe every single prisoner in gitmo had it done to them.
FTFA:
The CIA has maintained that only three prisoners were ever subjected to waterboarding, but the report alludes to evidence that it may have been used on others, including photographs of a well-worn waterboard at a black site where its use was never officially recorded. The committee said the agency could not explain the presence of the board and water-dousing equipment at the site, which is not named in the report, but is believed to be the âoeSalt Pitâ in Afghanistan.
Who are you going to believe, the CIA or your own lying eyes?
If rectal feeding depends on it, then i'm definitely going to believe the CIA, and the NSA should note this, please.
Oh just fuck off. If you actually read TFA, you'd see that it also indicates that Bush had little to no knowledge of the specifics of the interrogations or their brutality, and in 2006, upon his learning of it, it was ramped down. Also, waterboarding was done on 3 prisoners, though the media would have you believe every single prisoner in gitmo had it done to them. The onus here is on the CIA, primarily. And that's from a report from people not likely to be favorable to Bush.
If you actually read TFA, you'd see that it also indicates that in 2006 (April), upon his learning of it, Bush proceeded to repeat himself:
Sept. 6, 2006: "I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world: The United States does not torture."
Oct. 17, 2006: "As I’ve said before, the United States does not torture. It’s against our laws and it’s against our values."
http://www.pensitoreview.com/2...
No, I don't mean I agree with you, I mean I literally won a game of conservative "BINGO", as in you successfully parroted almost every current conservative talking point. Please allow me to enumerate:
1. Obama doesn't like America
2. The US was "scared out of our minds"
3. Never recovered economically
4. Justification of impunity
5. Should have escalated war
6. Justification of torture using irrelevant current events
7. FUD as the result of these revelations
8. More Obama FUD
9. The world only respects military might
10. Weak justification of destroying and occupying Iraq
11. "The gov't is failing to protect our interests"
12. Obama golfs...
So congratulations for being able to repeat things you've heard without having to actually put any real thought into it. A two-year-old toddler can do the same.
Wait a minute. They forced pureed food into detainees butts, in one case causing severe tearing and prolapse.
But hey, this Anonymous Coward says that's not brutality so we can all go back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Seriously, fuck you.
Freud would have quite a bit to say about this ultra-male bonding that involves sticking things up other men's rectums, and the armchair admirers thereof.
Are there "lawful" enemy combatants and under who's law these ones unlawful?
Yes, there are. I'll explain in a moment. The Law in this case is International Law - the Geneva Convention, among others, is involved here.
And aren't they enemy combatants because a "coalition of forces" invaded their countries?
Yes, that is part of what makes them enemy combatants. The other part is that they chose to shoot at those invaders.
Ok, so some explanation -- there's some rules of war that the countries in power at the time put together. They include things like soldiers needing to wear a uniform with identifying marks for the country (or group in cases where you might not have an officially recognized country) in whose service they are fighting. If two of those powers went to war, they'd follow those rules (in theory), and soldiers of the other side would be lawful enemy combatants (or usually just enemy combatants, contrasted against enemy civilians).
If some of those soldiers stripped off their uniforms and did stuff against those rules, they could be disavowed by the other country -- they were out of uniform and therefore they were unlawful enemy combatants. The special rules regarding the treatment of Prisoners of War wouldn't apply. They could be held after the cessation of hostilities, for example, and could be tried by the country that captured them for their crimes rather than those acts (such as mass-homicide and such) being considered acts of war and therefore somehow perfectly acceptable.
So if these insurgent groups wore a uniform of some sort, and followed a normal command structure, and didn't hide in civilian populations, they could be lawful enemy combatants. They'd also be a lot easier to eliminate, which is why they don't do that. However, because they aren't playing by the Big Powers rules, that means the Big Powers don't technically need to follow those rules either. I still think we should, but that's a separate discussion.
That should hopefully help you understand where the term comes from, and why it gets used in reference to actions like this.
Yes, enemy combatants who attempt to avoid identification are classified as spies and terrorists, and are not protected by rules of war.
On the other hand, you do have to supply some evidence that they are actually combatants, and not just some shmuck picked up off the street, or turned in by a tenant who owed 6 months rent.
You gotta do what you gotta do. If someone was tied to terrorizing my neighborhood I would hang them from a chain, soak them with salt water, and zap them with a MIG Welder.
And if you couldn't find them, then you'd find a bunch of random folks, and do it to them. Because this is serious, dammit!!
Slashdot Mirror
Coming soon; Keurig 3.0, which will use only Keurig brand water, to ensure the safety and satisfaction of the consumer.
Somebody mod this up please.
Keurigs used to be popular in waiting rooms of various consumer enterprises around here, but I've noticed they're being retired in favor of the good old coffeepot half full with several hours old sludge. I'm assuming $$ is the reason.
Pubmed probably. However, the CDC has a handy list of side effects: Mild problems following inactivated flu vaccine:
If these problems occur, they usually begin soon after the shot and last 1 or 2 days.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm#flu
To some degree, I have all of those all the time, except for the "where the shot was given" part.
This means the timecube is real!
I can't even find a flashcube.
Boring. I might head there next week-end if I can bother, or maybe the one after. Time travel means I can procrastinate indefinitely.
"Time Machines Repaired While You Wait"
This was 100% politics and had little to do with much else. Why else release such inflammatory information AGAIN?
...
The really sad part though is that it is highly possible that the release of this report will cost Americans their lives. The world is a dangerous place, but it's stupid to poke the enemy or hand them such a public relations win as this will be. We will be lectured by Iran and North Korea for human rights abuses and you can bet ISIS will be happy to use this to recruit/conscript more help.
(sarcasm)Oh Yea! That's great.. (/sarcasm)
The really sad part is that people get so caught up in petty politics that they can't see that torturing people is immoral and ineffective and that maybe we should consider not fucking torturing people and hold ourselves to a higher standard than "other people are worse than us."
When you're in the authoritarian hierarchical decision making mode, if your superiors tell you torture isn't immoral and anyway we're not doing it, then it's Your Truth. (See also "It's Not Warming, and Besides, Nobody Denies It's Warming, Scientists are Fraudsters")
New York Times, Nov. 8, 1967, p. 80.
Branding Rite Laid to Yale Fraternity
New Haven, Nov. 7
...
The charges against Delta Kappa Epsilon were made last Friday in a Yale Daily News article that accused campus fraternities of carrying on “sadistic and obscene” initiation procedures.
The charge that has caused the most controversy on the Yale campus is that Delta Kappa Epsilon applied a “hot branding iron” to the small of the back of its 40 new members in ceremonies two weeks ago. A photograph showing a scab in the shape of the Greek letter Delta, approximately half an inch waid, appeared in the article.
A former president of Delta [said] that branding is done with a hot coathanger. But the former president, George Bush, a Yale senior, said that the resulting wound is “only a cigarette burn.”
http://www.pensitoreview.com/2008/04/21/bush-torture-scandal-yale/
That's our Bush!
Our nation spent a decade running a network of torture prisons, including Abu Grahib and Guantanamo bay, where cathartic biblical justice was and still is the prescription. Most of these prisoners cant be tried, and cant be released, for reasons that cant be told to the public. The actual details, while speculated for years by the public in quiet shame, were not only far worse than we could imagine but deliberately and baselessly shrouded in secrecy from the public. our intelligence agency actually lied to the govenment it was created to protect. We can hardly keep our government open and when it is, its operation is ostensibly predicated on blanket covert surveillance against its own citizens. If anyone challenges it, we just lock them away forever and insist they are traitors. Our police operate entirely above the law, routinely executing unarmed citizens and exist in posession of several million dollars in military grade hardware from machine guns to tanks. the only thing "exceptional" about american exceptionalism these days is that we maintain the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet, and yet still havent managed to usher in the apocalypse despite a very public report on the sheer bumbling incompetence of the military divisions assigned to operate and maintain these weapons. The most devastating part about this as a foreigner, ill presume, is that a country of this level of dysfunction, porverty and animocity still controls such a disproportionate level of wealth, power, and influence.
Well, yeah. it's because God loves us, for our Freedom and Liberty and Godly Goodness.
I still remember a GOP debate during the primaries. The moderator asked for a show of hands, who would approve torture to save american lives. The camera slowly pans past all the candidates with their hands up. And then there's John McCain on the end with what can only be described as a horrified expression. I felt sorry for the guy that day, there in front of him were some of his closest colleagues and presumably a few friends saying that the torture the Vietcong did to him was not only justifiable but in fact justified from the perpetrators point of view.
Right now he's just glad the Cong didn't have blenders.
Page 115
You're implying that this was not useful information in the War On Terror. In fact, this was soon followed by Operation Smile, consisting of airdrops of huge numbers of filed toothbrushes over suspected enemy territory, followed by incessant bombardment with depressing Emo songs.
Heroes? They aren't heroes! They crawled back home in suburbia crying all the way to their office jobs and got a prescription for Prozac to deal with their PTSD while leaving the prisoners to be tortured and rot in Gitmo. Some heroes. A hero would have gotten a gun and stopped them from being tortured. A hero would have stood up on prime-time television and told the world what they saw in order to get it stopped. Being a hero means risking it all for doing something that believe so strongly in. Asking for a transfer to another division because you can't stand seeing someone tortured isn't not heroic.
Cue Bradley Manning.
The government works for the people? since when? A recent study demonstrated that the voters have NO power whatsoever. The corporates who pay the bribes... I mean donations are the ones that hold the power.
Those corporations which we give our salaries to in exchange for disposable crap, then complain that we have no power?
And that the information was obtained by torture in no way indicates that the information could not have been obtained without torture.
Not true! Liberal lies! If the enemy just made it up to stop being tortured, then there's no way we could have obtained it without torture!
When you decide the morality of the situation is asymmetrical, don't expect the other guy to see your side of it.
This has been the main argument in favor of torture. "Do you think the terrorists treat their prisoners nicely? Then why should we be bound to any conventions we know they won't abide?" The argument has always been that "they" started it.
The morality of any of these situations has to be asymmetrical, and "our side" always needs to be the kinder, more honest, and more fair side. As soon as you demonstrate your willingness to use the unethical or evil techniques of your enemy, you lose any distinction from them.
"Honey? Why did you take a dump on the kitchen floor?"
"Do you think the enemy doesn't take a dump on the kitchen floor?"
If the prevailing attitude is "we as Americans will accept anything done to you to protect us", then in some people's minds, it may well be okay.
Of course, if America decides that torturing other people is OK then America has pretty much lost any form of moral high ground, and should expect other countries to torture Americans with impunity.
When you decide the morality of the situation is asymmetrical, don't expect the other guy to see your side of it.
So, hey, if a couple of your CIA agents or citizens end up getting offed or tortured, don't suddenly say that's unfair. Because it's kind of the bar you set.
Oh puhleeze, again. Half the public would be happy to torture every Arab we can get our hands on, if it would keep the price of gas down in the low $3.
Of course they will lie about the "success" of what they did.
Does it matter it if was successful? If they could show that American lives were saved by torturing prisoners, would that make it okay?
random liberal stock character: "No Jack, you can't cut the baby's stomach open to take out the disarming codes for the nuclear bombs that will go off in every American city within 60 seconds from now"
Jack Bauer: "Damn these liberals and their rules against cutting babies open! What do they know about what we have to do to keep them safe!"
Approximately half the viewing public: "Yeah, damn those liberals and their rules against cutting babies open! No wonder we haven't won yet! they need to see reality like it really is!"
According to the report, CIA officials did not disclose the methods of interrogation to White House officials, either by omission or blatantly lying about it. This is in reference to techniques that went beyond the initial executive order authorizing "enhanced interrogation techniques." Note that this report is not collected from sources friendly to the previous administration; if they could have thrown Bush under the bus, they would have.
The report states that Bush was informed in April 2006. In Sept and Oct 2006, he was still categorically denying that the US ever tortures anyone.
"There is no -- I repeat, no -- cannibalism in the Royal Navy. And when I say none, I mean that there is a certain amount." "Dear Sir, I am glad to hear that your studio audience disapproves of the last skit as strongly as I. As a naval officer I abhor the implication that the Royal Navy is a haven for cannibalism. It is well known that we now have the problem relatively under control," -Monty Python
Also, waterboarding was done on 3 prisoners, though the media would have you believe every single prisoner in gitmo had it done to them.
FTFA:
The CIA has maintained that only three prisoners were ever subjected to waterboarding, but the report alludes to evidence that it may have been used on others, including photographs of a well-worn waterboard at a black site where its use was never officially recorded. The committee said the agency could not explain the presence of the board and water-dousing equipment at the site, which is not named in the report, but is believed to be the âoeSalt Pitâ in Afghanistan.
Who are you going to believe, the CIA or your own lying eyes?
If rectal feeding depends on it, then i'm definitely going to believe the CIA, and the NSA should note this, please.
Oh just fuck off. If you actually read TFA, you'd see that it also indicates that Bush had little to no knowledge of the specifics of the interrogations or their brutality, and in 2006, upon his learning of it, it was ramped down. Also, waterboarding was done on 3 prisoners, though the media would have you believe every single prisoner in gitmo had it done to them. The onus here is on the CIA, primarily. And that's from a report from people not likely to be favorable to Bush.
If you actually read TFA, you'd see that it also indicates that in 2006 (April), upon his learning of it, Bush proceeded to repeat himself: Sept. 6, 2006: "I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world: The United States does not torture." Oct. 17, 2006: "As I’ve said before, the United States does not torture. It’s against our laws and it’s against our values." http://www.pensitoreview.com/2...
BINGO!
No, I don't mean I agree with you, I mean I literally won a game of conservative "BINGO", as in you successfully parroted almost every current conservative talking point. Please allow me to enumerate:
1. Obama doesn't like America 2. The US was "scared out of our minds" 3. Never recovered economically 4. Justification of impunity 5. Should have escalated war 6. Justification of torture using irrelevant current events 7. FUD as the result of these revelations 8. More Obama FUD 9. The world only respects military might 10. Weak justification of destroying and occupying Iraq 11. "The gov't is failing to protect our interests" 12. Obama golfs...
So congratulations for being able to repeat things you've heard without having to actually put any real thought into it. A two-year-old toddler can do the same.
Everybody has to chug!
Wait a minute. They forced pureed food into detainees butts, in one case causing severe tearing and prolapse. But hey, this Anonymous Coward says that's not brutality so we can all go back to our regularly scheduled programming. Seriously, fuck you.
Freud would have quite a bit to say about this ultra-male bonding that involves sticking things up other men's rectums, and the armchair admirers thereof.
Are there "lawful" enemy combatants and under who's law these ones unlawful?
Yes, there are. I'll explain in a moment. The Law in this case is International Law - the Geneva Convention, among others, is involved here.
And aren't they enemy combatants because a "coalition of forces" invaded their countries?
Yes, that is part of what makes them enemy combatants. The other part is that they chose to shoot at those invaders.
Ok, so some explanation -- there's some rules of war that the countries in power at the time put together. They include things like soldiers needing to wear a uniform with identifying marks for the country (or group in cases where you might not have an officially recognized country) in whose service they are fighting. If two of those powers went to war, they'd follow those rules (in theory), and soldiers of the other side would be lawful enemy combatants (or usually just enemy combatants, contrasted against enemy civilians).
If some of those soldiers stripped off their uniforms and did stuff against those rules, they could be disavowed by the other country -- they were out of uniform and therefore they were unlawful enemy combatants. The special rules regarding the treatment of Prisoners of War wouldn't apply. They could be held after the cessation of hostilities, for example, and could be tried by the country that captured them for their crimes rather than those acts (such as mass-homicide and such) being considered acts of war and therefore somehow perfectly acceptable.
So if these insurgent groups wore a uniform of some sort, and followed a normal command structure, and didn't hide in civilian populations, they could be lawful enemy combatants. They'd also be a lot easier to eliminate, which is why they don't do that. However, because they aren't playing by the Big Powers rules, that means the Big Powers don't technically need to follow those rules either. I still think we should, but that's a separate discussion.
That should hopefully help you understand where the term comes from, and why it gets used in reference to actions like this.
Yes, enemy combatants who attempt to avoid identification are classified as spies and terrorists, and are not protected by rules of war. On the other hand, you do have to supply some evidence that they are actually combatants, and not just some shmuck picked up off the street, or turned in by a tenant who owed 6 months rent.
You gotta do what you gotta do. If someone was tied to terrorizing my neighborhood I would hang them from a chain, soak them with salt water, and zap them with a MIG Welder.
And if you couldn't find them, then you'd find a bunch of random folks, and do it to them. Because this is serious, dammit!!