End of This Blog

I have just discovered that Google has quietly enabled "per country" censorship of blog posts on this Blogger service. Therefore, I have stopped all blogging. I will not be part of Google's compliance with dictatorships and the suppression of human rights.

From Wired magazine:

Google to Censor Blogger Blogs on a ‘Per Country Basis’

By David Kravets January 31, 2012

Google has quietly announced changes to its Blogger free-blogging platform that will enable the blocking of content only in countries where censorship is required.

Twitter announced technology last week addressing the same topic. It said it had acquired the ability to censor tweets in the countries only where it was ordered removed, instead of on an internet-wide basis.

Twitter’s announcement via its blog sparked a huge online backlash. The microblogging service was accused of becoming a censoring agent.

Yet Google’s announcement three weeks ago — buried in a Blogger help page — went unnoticed until it was highlighted by TechDows on Tuesday.

This censorship by Google puts the lie to its supposed corporate code of conduct of "Don't be evil".

In fact Google is just another greedy corporation that blows smoke about social concerns and "putting the customer first" when in reality their only bottom line is corporate greed.

I'm disillusioned. I foolishly believed that ethical corporations can be run with a mandate to service three critical stakeholders: their shareholders, their workers, and the broader community that provides the matrix (the legal infrastructure, the transportation infrastructure, the educational infrastructure, the energy infrastructure, etc.) which makes capitalism possible.

But Google has proved that my idealism is poorly supported by facts on the ground. Instead, greed and evil is endemic in capitalism and Google has shown itself to be just another greedy corrupt and evil corporation.

Goodbye.

Obama's Persecution of Whistleblowers

Here is a talk given by whistleblower Jesselyn Radack:



As Racack points out in the video, the chilling fact is that "supposed left-leaning" Obama has brought more charges against whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined. With "friends" like Obama, the political left has no need for enemies.

Freedom to Peacefully Assemble and Petition the Government

Freedom in action:



The above video is a little hard to square with this very clear statement of citizen's rights in the United States Constitution, specifically the 1st Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I guess the Constitution really means that you have a "right" to peacefully assemble unless the police get annoyed and decide to take pot shots at you and harass you because they find your video camera "annoying".

If you ever read the USSR's Constitution or Communist China's Constitution, they are full of "rights". Wonderful documents. But only a fool would take the chance to act on any of those "rights" because those documents were purely window dressing to wave at the world and declare that those countries were "great democracies" with all the latest and best "rights" for their citizens. Banana Republic USA has joined their ranks. Lots of wonderful "rights" but don't you dare take them seriously.

Update 2011nov10: Here is an article in the San Jose Mercury News about the above incident:

Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminal justice professor who's an expert in police decision-making and use of force, said the video left him "astonished, amazed and embarrassed."

"Unless there's something we don't know, that's one of the most outrageous uses of a firearm that I've ever seen," he said. "Unless there's a threat that you can't see in the video, that just looks like absolute punishment, which is the worst type of excessive force."

Campbell said his friends saw him get hit and rushed him away to the shelter of a doorway. Someone brought an ice pack while a legal observer took down information, and then his friends helped him get to a taxi. He saw a doctor later Thursday, who told him to keep the wound bandaged and iced. He said Monday he has a 1½ -inch wound with swelling and bruising around it.

Campbell said he does social and digital media work for a local nonprofit and supports Occupy Oakland. "I don't camp out there, I've been a participant but not an active organizer," he said. "I've come out for general assemblies and marches, and I came out that day for the general strike to show my support."

He said he brought his camera that night to document any excessive force used by police, never imagining that might make him a target. "I don't know if I was in the right place at the wrong time or the wrong place at the right time."

He said he wants an independent, not internal, investigation of this and other reports of excessive force, and is considering whether to take legal action.

...

"It looks terrible," agreed Sam Walker, a professor emeritus of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, who consulted with Oakland police on the federal consent decree emerging from the Riders scandal. "It certainly looks like they singled him out to be shot ... and there does not appear to have been any sort of attack by the protester. Clearly, the camera is not approaching the officers, so they couldn't claim that he posed a threat."

Paul Chevigny, professor emeritus at the New York University School of Law, said it looks like "a violation of his First Amendment rights apart from being a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. He has a right to take a film of what the police do -- we've been over this thousands of times -- unless he's interfering in some way.

"The basic problem of police retaliating against people who are trying to record what's going on is perennial," said Chevigny, adding this occurs all over the nation. "They (officers) consider it a kind of 'contempt of cop.' It's an expression of the fact that people do not trust the police. The police read it as a criticism of them. It's not even necessarily that they're trying to prevent people from seeing what they're doing.

"But this extreme version (of retaliation) is very unfamiliar to me," he added. "I can't imagine what they're going to say about shooting this guy. Sounds like the Oakland police need a little brush-up on their training."

An Interesting Example of a Double Standard

This is just too precious. David Brooks writes for the NY Times and castigates the victims of sexual harassment by Herman Cain. But "Angry Black Lady" at the Balloon Juice blog takes to task for his double standard:

Why the New York Times continues to allow David Brooks to crap all over the opinion page, I will never understand.

...

Moving on:

Now we turn to ethical issues. My first question, and this is a genuine question, concerns the victims. Let’s detach ourselves from the specifics of the Cain case and consider a general question: If you are the victim of sexual harassment, and you agree to remain silent in exchange for a five-figure payoff, should any moral taint attach to you? In the old days, somebody who allowed a predator to continue his hunting in exchange for money would certainly be considered a sinner. I’m reluctant to judge people in these circumstances, but I’m inclined to agree. Am I missing something?

First of all, Brooks is never again allowed to use the word taint. Just don’t.

Second of all, everything Brooks said is victim-blaming bullshit. It’s the same argument that the uninformed and unenlightened make when they claim that rape victims have a duty to report their rapist lest they be held morally responsible should the rapist strike again. It’s a callous, anti-feminist, bullshit argument that has no place in public discourse, much less splattered on the New York Times by a person who could have simply googled it, and read one of a hundred blog posts written by feminists on the subject of victim-blaming in the context of sexual assault and harassment.

But here’s the kicker—David Brooks need not have even spent the fifteen minutes it would have taken him to discern that his “ethically responsible women don’t settle” argument is a load of horseshit because David Brooks himself has been the victim of unwanted advances.

In 2009, Brooks appeared on MSNBC with Lawrence O’Donnell to talk about a Republican Senator (whom he refused to name) making an unwanted advance on Brooks. He stated that during a dinner, a Republican Senator had “his hand hand on my inner thigh the whole time” and it made Brooks uncomfortable.

From Think Progress:

BROOKS: You know, all three of us spend a lot of time covering politicians and I don’t know about you guys, but in my view, they’re all emotional freaks of one sort or another. They’re guaranteed to invade your personal space, touch you. I sat next to a Republican senator once at dinner and he had his hand on my inner thigh the whole time. I was like, ehh, get me out of here.

HARWOOD: What?

BROOKS: I can only imagine what happens to you guys.

O’DONNELL: Sorry, who was that?

BROOKS: I’m not telling you, I’m not telling you.

Brooks said that he has “spoken to a lot of young women who are Senate staffers and they’ll have these middle age guys who are sort of in the middle of a mid-life crisis. Emotionally needy, they don’t know how to do it and sort of like these St. Bernards drooling everywhere.”

You would think that a high profile person like David Brooks would be so shamed by being "outed" for such an egregious example of a double standard. But he won't. He gets paid lots of bucks to sit in judgement of others. A little fact like the fact that he is a hypocrite isn't going to stop him. But readers should stop reading him. I did. Several years ago. I can only take a certain amount of sleazy reporting and moral unaccountability before I decide I won't waste any more time reading somebody who commits to print his moral failings and feels no shame.

US "Justice" Ascends to a New Height of Idiocy

Most Americans do not realize that they belong to a rogue state. Not only does the US indulge in "extraordinary rendition", it also has secret courts with secret decisions and secret measures which individuals can't talk about.

Here is a bit from a Wall Street Journal article mentioning the unmentionable:

The U.S. government has obtained a controversial type of secret court order to force Google Inc. and small Internet provider Sonic.net Inc. to turn over information from the email accounts of WikiLeaks volunteer Jacob Appelbaum, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Sonic said it fought the government's order and lost, and was forced to turn over information. Challenging the order was "rather expensive, but we felt it was the right thing to do," said Sonic's chief executive, Dane Jasper. The government's request included the email addresses of people Mr. Appelbaum corresponded with the past two years, but not the full emails.

Both Google and Sonic pressed for the right to inform Mr. Appelbaum of the secret court orders, according to people familiar with the investigation. Google declined to comment. Mr. Appelbaum, 28 years old, hasn't been charged with wrongdoing.

The court clashes in the WikiLeaks case provide a rare public window into the growing debate over a federal law that lets the government secretly obtain information from people's email and cellphones without a search warrant. Several court decisions have questioned whether the law, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, violates the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Jacob Appelbaum's case demonstrates that in the US one can be deemed "innocent" but still be subjected to arbitrary detention at the pleasure of the government. Worse, there can be secret restrictions on the mentioning of any "measures" taken against this innocent person by the security organs of the state. Such are the black arts of "legalized" by the US's Patriot Act.

From Wikipedia:

• In a resolution passed on June 29, 2005, they stated that "Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act allows the government to secretly request and obtain library records for large numbers of individuals without any reason to believe they are involved in illegal activity."


• Secret Service jurisdiction was extended to investigate computer fraud, access device frauds, false identification documents or devices, or any fraudulent activities against U.S. financial institutions. [Funny, the $13 trillion fraud by US financial institutions isn't covered and the US Justice department has shown no interest in investigating those frauds despite the fact that it has deprive life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness from 25 million unemployed, 8 million foreclosures that removed homes from people, and the whole ugly mess of banks "managing" property titles outside the law and getting them so messed up that people without mortgages are being foreclosed by banks and have to fight to save their homes from seizure by banks with no rights to the homes!]


• In 2004, FBI agents used this provision to search and secretly examine the home of Brandon Mayfield, who was wrongfully jailed for two weeks on suspicion of involvement in the Madrid train bombings. While the U.S. Government did publicly apologize to Mayfield and his family, Mayfield took it further through the courts. On September 26, 2007, judge Ann Aiken found the law was, in fact, unconstitutional as the search was an unreasonable imposition on Mayfield and thus violated the Fourth Amendment.


• In 2005, Library Connection, a nonprofit consortium of 27 libraries in Connecticut, received a National Security Letter (NSL) from the FBI, along with its accompanying perpetual gag order, demanding library patrons’ records. George Christian, executive director of Library Connection, and three members of the executive committee of the board engaged the ACLU to file suit to challenge the constitutional validity of the NSL. Because Section 505 of the USA PATRIOT Act, which authorizes the FBI to demand records without prior court approval, also forbids, or gags, anyone who receives an NSL from telling anyone else about receiving it, they also challenged the validity of the gag order. For almost a year the ACLU fought to lift the gag order, challenging the government’s power under Section 505 to silence four citizens who wished to contribute to public debate on the PATRIOT Act. In May 2006, the government finally gave up its legal battle to maintain the gag order. On June 26, 2006, the ACLU announced that, after dropping its defense of the gag provision accompanying the NSL request, the FBI abandoned the lawsuit entirely. The Connecticut Four were honored by the ALA with the 2007 Paul Howard Award for Courage for their challenge to the National Security Letter and gag order provision of the USA PATRIOT Act. The Connecticut Four are: 1. George Christian, executive director of Library Connection 2. Peter Chase, vice president of Library Connection, director of the Plainville (CT) Public Library, and chairman of the Connecticut Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee 3. Barbara Bailey, president of Library Connection and director of the Welles- Turner Memorial Library in Glastonbury, Connecticut 4. Jan Nocek, secretary of Library Connection and director of the Portland (CT) Library. In a summary of the actions of the Connecticut Four and their challenge to the USA PATRIOT Act, Jones (2009: 223) notes: “Librarians need to understand their country’s legal balance between the protection of freedom of expression and the protection of national security. Many librarians believe that the interests of national security, important as they are, have become an excuse for chilling the freedom to read.”


• Another controversial aspect of the USA PATRIOT Act is the immigration provisions that allow for the indefinite detention of any alien whom the Attorney General believes may cause a terrorist act. Before the USA PATRIOT Act was passed, Anita Ramasastry, an associate professor of law and a director of the Shidler Center for Law, Commerce, & Technology at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle, Washington, accused the Act of depriving basic rights for immigrants to America, including legal permanent residents. She warned that "Indefinite detention upon secret evidence — which the USA PATRIOT Act allows — sounds more like Taliban justice than ours. Our claim that we are attempting to build an international coalition against terrorism will be severely undermined if we pass legislation allowing even citizens of our allies to be incarcerated without basic U.S. guarantees of fairness and justice."

It is interesting to note that Obama who ran on a platform of "transparency" and "accountable government" has happily continued the Bush-era trampling of human rights and the extension of secret government. Obama has pushed into new areas by putting in place laws that more savagely deal with whistle-blowers who try to identify abuse of power by government!

If you wish to read about the abysmal trampling on human rights by the US government, read the Wikipedia entry for Maher Arar. Just one of many Canadian citizens subjected to state terror, torture, and high-handed illegal treatment by the US. The Canadian government has publicly apologized to Maher Arar and given him C$10.5 million to compensate for the severe trauma and injuries he suffered at the hands of the US and its third-party torturers. An innocent man was whisked off a flight and held in secret for 374 days. So much for "justice" from the US. The courts are a mockery in the US since Maher Arar can't get his case heard in the US. The US refuses to give him "standing" before the courts to even hear his case!

The Art & Science of Placebo

I love this little video. It is both a joy to watch and informative...



I want to get one of those "placebo buttons". I want a monster one. Something a foot or two across that it takes both hands to push. And I want it to have a satisfyingly strong spring behind it so that I have to give it a really good push to get the full placebo "effect".

Oh... and for me, geek that I am... this is probably the most effective placebo for dealing with a down day...



For those seeking "technical details", click here.

The Price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilence

Flash! News from the front in the war on terrorism...

Here is an account of the incredible heroism of America's front line defense against terrorism. An alert border agent discovered a Canadian miscreant who willfully refused to divulge that she was carrying a know biohazardous material, the foundations of making a terrorist bomb, the well know "Ontario raspberry" in her car while crossing the border. The alert border agent spotted the illegal item and bravely did his duty to protect the American public from this brazen would-be-terrorist: he performed a strip search. Yes, it is an ugly task, but those officers have been trained to carry out all actions from strip search to waterboarding to protect the American public.

What is shocking is that the Canadian thinks she has some "human rights"! Those Canadians are outrageous. They should realize they have no more rights than Americans and the Americans happily gave up all their rights when their Congress passed the Patriot Act (then reaffirmed it and extended it with Patriot Act II). All law-abiding Americans know they have no rights. When the police tell them to strip, they strip. When the police bring out the rubber truncheons to encourage truth-telling, American speak up and spill the beans. Even the truculent Americans who push their police to bring out the big gun, waterboarding, realize this is all in the name of preserving "democracy" and "liberties" for the liberty-loving Americans.

Listen to what this cur, this dispicable Canadian alleges:

An angry and embarrassed Ontario woman who says she was strip-searched at the Ambassador Bridge without justification has sued two U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.

The Detroit Free Press says Loretta Van Beek of Stratford filed the suit in Detroit federal court against the unnamed agents. She says she was en route to her Georgia vacation home last March when one agent strip-searched and groped her while the other one watched.

Van Beek says she was detained for two hours, then sent to a windowless cell and ordered to strip because she neglected to disclose she had raspberries in her vehicle.

The lawsuit claims one agent aggressively groped her breasts and genital area while the other watched. Van Beek says she was then photographed and fingerprinted and sent back to Canada.

Attorney S. Thomas Wienner of Rochester tells the Free Press the experience traumatized Van Beek and “She’s concerned she might not be the only victim.”

Every red-blooded American knows she should be grateful than "extreme measures" weren't taken. But rest assured, if she or her kind, try to bring that bright red fruit across the border, America's heros, the Border Agents, stand ready to take them out back and shoot them dead. As Barry Goldwater so eloquently put it: Extremism In The Defence of Liberty Is No Vice



Thank God for America... that beacon on the hill, that shining light of liberty, those patriots will not tolerate raspberries sneaking across the border!

Only pinkos and sissies go for this sick complaint by pastor Martin Niemöller who wimped out in Hitler's Germany:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

I say:

First they let a woman with a raspberry cross the border,

Then they let somebody with a banana slip by,

Next is was a boy with some blueberries,

Then came those carrying kiwi fruit.

I tell you... we have to draw the line with raspberries. If not, they will be bringing in bombs and rockets, they will be sneaking al Qaeda across the border, and there goes the neighborhood. Property values will fall and the good people will have to flee to the suburbs! So stop them now before it is too late. Strip searches, truncheons, ripping fingernail out raw and bloody, waterboarding... whatever it takes. But don't allow a single raspberry more to cross that border!

Privacy and Facebook

Here is a bit from an article in the NY Times where the journalist interviews Cory Doctorow about companies gathering large amounts of data about us:

The privacy bargain we make with tech companies usually involves giving up some personal data in return for a free service, as with Facebook or many mobile applications.

Doctorow argues it’s hard for people to assign a value to personal data. When the full consequences of giving up that data are still unknown, how do you determine whether the privacy bargain is a fair one?

“It’s hard to get worked up about things where the failure and the deed are separated by a long way,” said Doctorow. “It’s the same reason that people start smoking.”

He insists data-driven companies such as Facebook actively exploit users to solicit as much data as possible. “Facebook trains you to undervalue your privacy. These companies are choca with social scientists now and those people have read their Skinner (an American behaviorist), have read their Adler (founder of the school of the school of individual psychology) and they understand intermittent reinforcement.” In exchange for posting status updates, photos and other information, Facebook users are intermittently rewarded with attention from people they care about. This mechanism can have addictive qualities similar to gambling.

...

Tech companies often do not offer clear or easy privacy choices to users. Facebook constantly changes its privacy settings to push the default towards more public data, and its Byzantine custom privacy settings are bewildering for a new user. “Complexifying a proposition is usually there to stop you from finding out whether the deal is good,” comments Doctorow.

With mobile applications, the choice is often between giving the application all the data it requests or not installing at all.

...

One of the reasons that we undervalue out personal data seems to be that the threat is not visceral and concrete. “In technology we often have this core problem of taking a fairly abstract social harm and rendering it concrete,” concludes Doctorow. “I think science fiction is rubbish at predicting the future, but it can create narratives that become part of our discourse. Imagine it’s 1947 and Orwell hasn’t written 1984 yet, and you’re trying to explain to someone why you don’t want to be electronically surveiled.”

In other words, we are like those naive animals that don't understand that cars kill and wander out on the road at night only to be flattened one day as our past comes back to bite us in the ass.

My complaint about the tech companies is that they require you to contractually sign off of a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo which is (a) long and boring, (b) mostly unintelligible, and (c) puts liabilities on you while ensuring that the service provider has no liabilities. That clause (c) is the real killer because under the legal system it is effect "forever". You could have just given away rights to your first born and not know it. That kind of legal system is insane.

Your Friend, Mr. Policeman

Funny. When I was a kid I was taught that Mr. Policeman was my friend. I've since learned to give them wide berth because you can't predict how they will behave and you essentially have no rights unless you have lots of money and powerful friends to help you buy/bribe the appropriate "justice".

Here is a case of an adolescent who was beaten and arrested "because he had a suspicious bulge in his pants". That was a colostomy bag. And the guy suffered Down's symdrome so when the police got pushy and aggressive, the poor kid did what any normal person (or animal) would do. He tried to flee. That simply enraged the cop who was too stupid to recognize mental impairment or be acquainted with the need for colostomy bags.

And here is the case of a physically disabled woman sitting in front of her house who didn't jump when a cop ordered her to "jump". She mistakenly believed that she had a right to sit on her property and wait for the ice cream truck to drive by so she could get some ice cream. The cop "subdued" her so violently during her arrest she had to be taken to the hospital for treatment of injuries during the "arrest".

It is good to see that the "land of the free" has police to make sure that freedom is properly respected. It is so heart-warming to read that "the best country in the world" is protected by diligent police who aren't confused or impeded by mental retardation or physical disability. They believe in dishing out "justice" to any and all with an "even hand".

When you read the above, you can understand why the US is busy killing thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are simply doing "police work" on an international scale bringing the fruits of American "freedom" and "love of liberty" to everyone.

I wish I lived in a world where the police were in fact "working for the people" and respected citizen's rights. But sadly, I live in an alternate universe where the police feel they are employed by the top 1% to enforce a system where the job of the bottom 99% is to help enrich to top 1%. In this alternate universe, the laws are written to give tax cuts to the rich while providing the "benefits" of fees and hidden taxes to the bottom 99%. The judicial system is a pompous, expensive, ridiculous system that delivers "justice" that is tangential to real justice. The rich get their wrists slapped no matter how many victims and how seriously harmed those victims are. The poor get manhandled and long prison terms for their "crimes" no matter how little real harm (if any) was done because "everybody knows" the poor are dangerous and must be watched closely and severely punished for the least intimation that they might step out of line.

Human "Rights" in Saudia Arabia

Here are some bits from a good op-ed by Maureen Dowd in the NY Times:

In the ’50s, at the height of the American mania for jokes and TV skits about ditzy women behind the wheel, there was a saying: “Women drivers, no survivors.”

That takes on an ominous new meaning as Saudi women agonize over whether to join in a drive-in Friday — a national protest where women will take the wheel to see if they get thrown in the clink en masse. In 1990, 47 women from the Saudi intelligentsia were so inspired by American troops — and female soldiers — gathering in the kingdom for the first President Bush’s war against Saddam that they went for a joy ride to protest Saudi Arabia being the only country where women can’t drive.

The fundamentalist clerics went into overdrive, branding the women “whores” and “harlots.” They lost their jobs and were harassed. Their passports were revoked and they had to sign papers agreeing not to talk about the drive. When I interviewed some of them 12 years later, they were only beginning to shake off the vengeful backlash.

For all the highfalutin talk of George and Laura Bush about how W.’s wars would help expand the rights of women in the Middle East, there’s only so much pressure America can put on Saudi Arabia about letting women drive without jeopardizing the flow of oil that lets people drive here. President Obama did not even mention Saudi Arabia in his big speech about the Middle East last month.

Driving may not be as important an issue as the end of male guardianship, but it is the high-octane nexus where our hypocrisies interlock.

...

But then a 32-year-old single mother named Manal al-Sharif, an Internet consultant for the state-run oil company Aramco, posted a video of herself on YouTube, driving in a black abaya in the Eastern Province city of Al-Khobar.

She told CNN that the last straw was one night when she was trying to get home to her 5-year-old son and she couldn’t catch a cab or find her brother to pick her up or get away from male drivers harassing her as she walked alone.

“I’m a grown-up woman,” she said, adding: “And I was crying like a kid in the street because I couldn’t find someone to pick me up to take me back home.”

She was put in jail for a week and forced to sign a document agreeing not to talk to the press or continue her calls for reform. This had a chilling effect on women.

But, this week, Reem al-Faisal, a princess, activist and Jidda photographer who is the granddaughter of the late King Faisal and the niece of the Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, spoke out, writing in The Arab News that “it is truly tragic that we have to fight for such an essential yet mediocre right” and be treated as “eternal minors.”

Notice how Barack "Change you can believe in!" Obama is absolutely invisible on this issue. Obama knows how his masters are. He pretends to be a liberal and progressive, but he is a centrist and conservative interested mostly in making sure that the rich and powerful stay rich and powerful.

Doctors are Now Copyrighting Your Thoughts

The horrors of George Orwell's 1984 are arriving a tad late, 2011 instead of 1984, but they are definitely here. Here is a bit from a story on Ars Technica about a dentist demanding that you sign away rights to any opinions about the service he provides -- he is copyrighting your thoughts as "his property"!!! -- before he will agree to treat you:

When I walked into the offices of Dr. Ken Cirka, I was looking for cleaner teeth, not material for an Ars Technica story. I needed a new dentist, and Yelp says Dr. Cirka is one of the best in the Philadelphia area. The receptionist handed me a clipboard with forms to fill out. After the usual patient information form, there was a "mutual privacy agreement" that asked me to transfer ownership of any public commentary I might write in the future to Dr. Cirka. Surprised and a little outraged by this, I got into a lengthy discussion with Dr. Cirka's office manager that ended in me refusing to sign and her showing me the door.

The agreement is based on a template supplied by an organization called Medical Justice, and similar agreements have been popping up in doctors' offices across the country. And although Medical Justice and Dr. Cirka both claim otherwise, it seems pretty obvious that the agreements are designed to help medical professionals censor their patients' reviews.

The legal experts we talked to said that the copyright provisions of these agreements are probably toothless. But the growing use of these agreements is still cause for concern. Patients who sign the agreements may engage in self-censorship in the erroneous belief that the agreements bar them from speaking out. And in any event, the fact that a doctor would try to gag his patients raises serious questions about his judgment.

I love how lawyers bend and twist things into completely cruel and criminal red tape. A person has a right to their own thoughts. A person has a right to express opinion. "Copyright" was never intended as a vehicle to control opinion. It was meant to protect artists from having their works stolen by publishers who refused to pay for the right to profit from another person's work.

Funny... the legal system does nothing to stop torture and abuse of the law. But it enables idiots like the above dentist to tie up court time on frivolous cases where they are trying to suppress the ability of patients to have a free opinion. Nutty!

Syria & Human Rights

It is interesting to note that while Syria is slaughtering hundreds of its citizens in order to suppress popular dissent, it is on track to join the United Nations Human Rights Council. From Fox News:

The brutal crackdown by Syrian President Bashar Assad may finally be getting the attention of world leaders -- but apparently not enough to stop Syria from becoming the newest member of the U.N. Human Rights Council.

And despite calling for an independent investigation into the crackdown, which has left hundreds dead, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon apparently won’t do much about blocking Syria’s path to the human rights group.

"That's not really for the secretary general to suggest to a member state," said Martin Nesirky, a spokesman for the secretary-general, when asked if the U.N. chief would ask Syria to drop out of the running for the post. When asked if Ban had brought up the point during his telephone conversation April 9 with Assad, Nesirsky told Fox News, "that's not really something the secretary general would raise specifically, because it's for other member states to decide on the membership of the Human Rights Council."

CBC news says that the US hasn't withdrawn its ambassador despite all the killings. And, oddly enough, CBC which is a Canadian national news source didn't mention whether Canada is withdrawing its ambassador. So assume the Canadian is also staying in Damascus. So much for hypocrisy.

It looks to me that Bashar al-Assad is busy trying to top his father Hafez al-Assad and his infamous massacre in Hama:

Initial diplomatic reports from western countries stated that only 1000 were killed. Subsequent estimates vary, with the lower estimates claiming that at least 10,000 Syrian citizens were killed, the majority civilians, while others put the number at 20,000 (Robert Fisk), or 40,000 (Syrian Human Rights Committee).

The US and NATO went after Gaddafi because he was a "wild man" who openly supported terrorism until quite recently. The Assad family has quietly supported terrorism and quietly has muzzled and smothered Lebanon, so they get a pass. Isn't "international justice" wonderful?

Taking Control, Full Control, of Your Life

I found this bit from a post on Dan Ariely's blog very interesting. I've read both his books "Predictably Irrational" and "The Upside of Irrationality". Both are delightful and insightful. I also find his life inspiring: while preparing "fire signs" (a common feature in ceremonies of youth movements in Israel) he suffered third-degree burns over 70 percent of his body from an accidental magnesium flare explosion. He learned many lessons from how he handled himself through this time.

Here is the bit of his post that I found most interesting:

As the American population ages, the debate about the ethics of physician-assisted suicide for terminal patients becomes more important.

...

Outside of philosophical arguments, examination of an interesting finding regarding physician-assisted suicide – know as “The Oregon Paradox” – can add an interesting dimension to the debate. The paradox is the finding that when terminal patients in Oregon receive lethal medication (under Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act), they often feel a sense of greater wellbeing and a desire to live longer. In 2010, of 96 patients requested lethal medication, only 61 actually took it. Even more interesting are the many anecdotal accounts of terminal patients, upon receiving lethal medication, that feel a surge of wellbeing and a desire to persevere through their illness.

Why is this this the case? Looking at this question from an expected-utility perspective suggests that given the option to terminate their own life, terminal patients will decide how long they want to live by comparing the value they expect to gain from the rest of their lives to the expected intensity of their suffering. At the point where future utility is expected to be negative – that is, when the patient’s condition becomes so intolerable that living any longer is not worth the cost – the patient would choose to end life if the option were available.

The critical point from this perspective is that patients choose the amount of time they are willing to continue living with their illness, which will depend how quickly they deteriorate. If the rate of deterioration is slower than expected, then patients should delay terminating their lives; if the rate of deterioration is faster than expected, patients should desire to end their lives quicker.

But now let us say that patients have been prescribed lethal medication and have the option of ending their lives at any point of their choosing. As before, patients don’t want to choose a time too soon or too distant, but with the power to control the end of their lives they no longer have a reason to err on the side of haste! The patients can now wake up every day with the comfort of knowing that they do not have to suffer through pain or stress they might find intolerable.

Being given the option to determine the time of our own death can transform patients from powerless victims of their illness to willing survivors of it. Together, the importance of feeling in control and the ability to reduce (but not eliminate) uncertainty about rate of deterioration adds an interesting new dimension to the underlying ethical debate and seems to provide credence to the benefits of legalized physician-assisted suicide.

It is clear is that we need a greater understanding of the decision-making of patients at the end of their lives, and that with this improved understanding we can construct policy to better protect their wellbeing (for an interesting recent movie on this topic see “How to Die in Oregon”).

I'm a bit of a fanatic. I think people should take responsibility for themselves and have the freedom to make their own choices. On the other hand, I realize that some people really aren't competent to run their own lives (mental deficiencies, moral deficiencies, etc.) So I'm in a bit of a bind. I live under a grand banner about "the nature of man' but realize that there needs to be lots of find print and "lawyerese" to handle the fact that we are not all cookie-cutter the same. In short, I don't really have a simple clear answer to all of life's questions that can be printed on a cereal boxtop. I end up with slogans and qualifications. And I leave it open for debate and clarification. That's the best I think anybody can do.

I do know that even though euthanasia is "illegal" my mother in the 1980s told the doctor's "no heroic measures" for her father which was essentially the code words for "let him die". And with my mother, when she couldn't stand her disabilities from a flubbed brain surgery asked me to "get her out of here!", I did the paperwork to move her to a hospice where she was allowed to die. In effect I signed her death papers.

As Dan Ariely's piece above shows, the issue of euthanasia is not black-and-white as the noisy interest groups would make you think. It is complex. Ultimately it is best left to the family with state intervention only if it is clear that somebody in the family is manipulating things for their own interest and things are not being done in the best interest of the person who is dying. That is a broad rule that requires eternal vigilance and interpretation, but that is the glory of English common law. It is law that is "living" and constantly being reinterpreted as we learn more and as things change. Nothing carved in stone like the religious bigots would have you believe. Instead, a law based on the best judgments of your peers and an honest judge.

Corey Doctorow on Attempts at Social Control of Computers

Cory Doctorow on March 5th gave a talk at the University of Toronto. It is well worth listening to. The following is a bit from a page summarizing Doctorow's talk and provides a podcast of the talk for you to listen to. It is well worth your time!

The keynote speaker at the conference was best selling author, activist and blogger Cory Doctorow, whose presentation was titled A Little Bit Pregnant: Why it’s a Bad Idea to Regulate Computers the Way We Regulate Radios, Guns, Uranium and Other Special-Purpose Tools.

In his keynote speech Cory addresses the issue of computer regulation in general and, more specifically, asks: What happens when we take the failed regulatory model from the copy-right realm and try to import it into other realms too? What are the consequences?

Here are some key points from Doctorow’s speech:

“Designing general purpose computers that sneak around their owners’ backs is a terrible idea. We’ve already seen what happens when you add just a little bit of control to networks and computers – most recently we saw Iran’s and Egypt’s secret police mining Facebook to figure out whom to arrest. Virus writers and identity thieves have already figured out that when there is a technology, that is supposed to prevent copying, running on a computer, that prevents certain programs from being seen or modified by users, that those are the programs you’d want to infect with your viruses because they also cannot be seen by the user of the computer.

[...]

Once we create the facility to lawfully intercept terrorist communications, or to speedily take down copy-right-infringement or to interdict pirate software, or to remotely prevent bad radios from running, we create the tools by which tyrants, crooks, snoops and jerks will spy on and control us, even if for the best of reasons.

[...]

Building a general purpose PC that is just a little bit locked down is like finding a woman who is just a little bit pregnant. Once the facility can be used for a legitimate purpose, it can also be used for illegitimate purpose…”

So, what is Cory’s proposed way of addressing some of the more clear-cut current and potential future problems surrounding the usage of general purpose computers, such as creating DIY super-bugs, illicit criminal or terrorist communications and child-pornography?

Well, you’ll have to hear his keynote speech in full to find out.

Obama's "Partners" for Stability and Security

Here is a video of Egyptian state police arresting Wael Ghonim, an Egyptian blogger, computer engineer and the Head of Marketing of Google Middle East and North Africa since January 2010:



He has now been missing for well over a week. He is either dead of imprisoned for who knows how long. This is the Egypt that Obama wants to "partner" with to provide "stability and security".

It is tragic that a promise to change is the deal that Mubarak and Obama have decided on to trick the world into ignoring the reimposition of dictatorship in Egypt. Any pretense of "change" is belied by the fact that the state media is completely censored, that Egypt continues to harrass and imprison journalist, and that all elements of state power remain in the hands of Mubarak and his thugs. This is the "new Egypt" which Obama is selling to his people as the "best deal" for change, a "change" that brings "stability and security"... because it is no real change!

Update 2011feb07: Wael Ghonim has been released after being held for nearly two weeks. Here is a bit from a UK Guardian newspaper report:

Wael Ghonim, a marketing manager who became a hero to anti-government protestors after he went missing on 27 January, confirmed in the interview following his release that he was behind a highly influential Facebook page that helped lead to what he described as "the revolution of the youth of the internet."

Before his appearance on Monday on a privately owned Egyptian television channel, the father-of-two was held in repute by many who believed that he was the anonymous activist behind a Facebook page named after a young Egyptian businessman whose death at the hands of police in June set off months of protests.

The page, "We are all Khaled Said", became one of the main tools for organising the demonstrations that started the revolt in earnest on 25 January.

However, Ghonim's stature across the country now appears destined to rise dramatically if the post-interview reaction on the internet is anything to go by. Calls are being made for him to stand as president. Others predicted that his performance, which was being acclaimed as a tour de force of calm but explosive political passion, would inevitably boost the numbers of those attending the latest mass demonstration in Cairo's Tahrir square and elsewhere this morning.

"I am not a hero. I only used the keyboard, the real heroes are the ones on the ground. Those I can't name," said Ghonim, who sobbed throughout the interview, which ended with him being overcome with emotion as he was shown images of some of those who died in the uprising.

While insisting that he had not been tortured and saying his interrogators treated him with respect, he said he was taken aback when others who he met in jail believed that he was "a traitor".

The US's Troubled Race Relations History

Here's a bit from Tom Ricks' The Best Defense blog:

... I didn't know until last weekend that baseball great Jackie Robinson, in 1944 a lieutenant in the Army's 758th Tank Battalion, was court-martialed back then for refusing to move to the back of an Army bus at Fort Hood, Texas. He was acquitted on all charges and honorably discharged later in the year.

He also had been turned away when he tried to play for the baseball team at Ft. Riley, Kansas. He was told to report instead to "the colored team" -- which didn't exist. A big joke.

Ricks addresses the DADT (Don't Ask, Don't Tell) policy for "handling gays" in the military. Sadly, the US has a long history of bad decisions and a slowness in meeting the rest of the world's standards in human relations. England eliminated slavery long before the US. Most Western countries got rid of bans on gays in the military years ago, but it drags on in the US. Worse, hypocrites like John McCain, have the power to drag their feet and prevent change. It reminds me of the fillibusters and long harangues by politicians in the late 1950s and 1960s over racial integration. There is something in the water in the US that encourages digging in heels over social issues. (Actually, it isn't the water, it is the fundamentalist Christian religion spread amongst a number of denominations that creates the problem.)

You would think a people would look at themselves in the mirror, feel shame, and make a pledge to "never again" behave in such a unjust, socially backward way. Sadly, that never seems to happen. Instead, the give ground grudgingly and dig in their heels just a bit down the road on the next "issue" and refuse to give ground.

The Nanny State Knows Best

And who are you to dare argue with a bureaucrat as to what is healthy to eat and what will endanger your own child?

Here is an article on Reason magazine about a woman who lost custody of her baby for eating a bagel with "everything" on it! Obviously you don't arrest Dunkin' Donuts for selling life-threatening drug-adulterated food. Nope! You go to the unsuspecting mother and seize her baby! That's how a bureaucracy is supposed to work.

Oh... and about that drug-adulterated bagel. "Everybody" knows that poppy seeds are fatal and should be avoided like the plague. Right? And this isn't just some bureaucrats opinion. This is solid science based on years of lab results. Right? No? Don't tell me we have bureaucrats deciding that lettuce is a hallucinagenic or that ketchup is a paralytic agent? They couldn't make that kind of stupid judgement, could they?

Well... apparently so...

Eat a Bagel, Lose Your Baby

Jacob Sullum | November 9, 2010

The ACLU of Pennsylvania recently filed a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of a couple whose newborn baby was kidnapped by Lawrence County Children and Youth Services (LCCYS) because her mother recklessly consumed an "everything" bagel from Dunkin' Donuts the day before the birth. Jameson Hospital, where Isabella Rodriguez was born on April 27, has a policy of testing expectant mothers' urine for illegal drugs and reporting positive results to LCCYS, even without any additional evidence that the baby is in danger of neglect or abuse. LCCYS, in turn, has a policy of seizing such babies from their homes based on nothing more than the test result. Unfortunately for Isabella's parents, Elizabeth Mort and Alex Rodriguez, Jameson sets the cutoff level for its opiate test so low that it can be triggered by poppy seeds, which is why two caseworkers and two Neshannock Township police officers visited their home the day after baby and mother returned from the hospital. LCCYS seized the three-day-old girl and put her in foster care for five days before conceding it had made a mistake.

In their complaint (PDF), Mort and Rodriguez say the "seize first, ask questions later" policy jointly implemented by Lawrence County and the Jameson Health System (motto: "there's no place like home") is not required by state or federal law and represents a conspiracy to deprive parents of their 14th Amendment rights. In addition to seeking "nominal, compensatory, and punitive damages," they are asking the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania to declare the policy unconstitutional.

The recklessness and indifference displayed by both the county and the hospital, neither of which made any attempt to corroborate suspicions that the baby might be in danger, is astonishing. According to the complaint, Mort's obstetrician, Nicole Carlson, "did not inform Plaintiff Mort of the positive UDS [urine drug screen] because, in her experience, many of the initial UDS tests come back as 'false positives.' In addition, Dr. Carlson did not inform Plaintiff Mort of the test results because Plaintiff s urine tests throughout her pregnancy were negative for the presence of drugs; because Dr. Carlson did not believe that the Plaintiff was a drug user; and because she did not want to frighten Plaintiff during her labor/delivery." The hospital and LCCYS nevertheless mindlessly proceeded to separate Isabella from her parents, based on nothing more than a "zero tolerance for poppy seeds" rule of their own invention.

More information about the case here.

Go read the original article to get the embedded links.

Everybody knows that the most dangerous person you can leave a baby with is its natural mother. You are far better off giving the baby to a stranger in the street if you are really concerned about the health and safety of a baby. Yep. That's what the good folks at the children and youth "services" know in Lawrence county Pennsylvania.

Sadly... I know of uncounted babies who have been removed from so-called "dangerous" mothers only to die in the home of some "child care" person hired by the state to "look after" the child. All too often these are people who simply want an easy income from the state, so they stack up the babies in the back room and crowd a dozen todlers into a bedroom and charge the state big bucks for all this fine "care and supervision" they give the kids. Meanwhile the kids die of starvation, mistreatment, and neglect. All because the state is "convinced" that the genetic mother is a hazard.

But ask any anthropologist and they will tell you that you chance of dying in the care of a stepmother is something like 10 to 20 times that of a mother. And you chances of dying in the care of stranger who is "looking after" you for money is about 100 times that of being left in the hands of a mother. But who is to question to "wisdom" of bureaucrats?

So this story of hard-hearted, cruel, and misguided bureaucrats goes on and on and on.

By the way... just week this horror story about the idiocy of "child protective services" turned up in my area. Click here for a Vancouver Sun story about a Down's Syndrome girl whose brothers tried to get her out of her drug-addicted mother's home, but child protective services ordered them to leave the young girl with her mother:

A 14-year-old girl with Down syndrome was left alone with her mother’s corpse in their Chilliwack trailer home for nine days after the mother died of a suspected drug overdose.

The girl’s two brothers are outraged at the province, saying their repeated warnings to the Ministry of Children and Family Development that their mother was unfit to care for the girl were never adequately addressed.

Mike Prentice, 32, said he and his brother Kevin, 29, who both live in North Vancouver, had reported their mother Yvonne to social services countless times for alleged alcoholism, addiction to pills including Clonazepam and Atavan and being physically and emotionally abusive.

In July, Kevin Prentice visited the trailer home, which Mike described as being filthy and “like an episode of Hoarders.” Seeing its condition, and their mother’s condition, Kevin took his sister to his home and called police, who told him to contact the Ministry of Children and Family Development, Mike Prentice said.

The ministry conducted a survey at the home later that month and told the brothers to return the girl, as their mother was going to charge them with kidnapping, Mike said.

“They deemed it okay for my sister to go back when all you had to do was take a look at my mom, and her house, to know something was seriously wrong,” he said, adding he had seen garbage and even dead mice in the residence.

On Sept. 14, a neighbour who realized he hadn’t seen any activity at the trailer peeked in through a window and made the grisly discovery.

“Two months after we called social services and the RCMP saying we’re worried our mom is going to harm herself and our sister’s going to be left with a dead corpse, my mom died,” Mike Prentice said.

Yvonne Prentice had been dead for about nine days and her body had begun to decompose. On the floor nearby were pills and boxes of macaroni — items left behind after the girl tried to nurse her dead mother back to health.

The girl, who cannot care for herself, was emaciated and fatigued. “She almost died too, because she didn’t eat or sleep and she’s been [taught] not to go to the door at any time,” Mike Prentice said. He said that when someone finally slid open the window, saw the corpse and asked his sister if she was okay, “She didn’t even answer because she was so fatigued she couldn’t get off the couch. Two more days and she would have died too.”

A coroner is investigating the cause of the mother’s death.

This story isn't rare. Every year there are more stories about how "child protective services" rip kids out of the parents home or from a foster home where the kids are very happy to throw the kids into the arms of strangers, there are stories each year of kids who die while under the "supervision" of "child protective services" either because the state has given the kids to a predator who abuses them or because the state can't identify a truly incompetent parent (such as the above) and leave the child with that person. In short, this "service" is a dis-service. It always has been and always will be. Why? Because it is just a "bureaucratic job". The people that staff these jobs punch in for their 7 hour day and prefer to sit in the office and shuffle papers than actually supervise children in the field. Of course they will tell you they are "overworked and underpaid". They will always do this. But the fact is, they are by and large incompetent. Sure the odd one is dedicated and cares, but that isn't the majority. Far from it.

The Argument of "Better Not to Have Been"

You don't have a cynical view of the "animal rights" people. They care more about animals than people. Here is my proof...

Here is a bit from a NY Times opinion piece by Peter Singer, the philosopher who is the main spokesman for "animal rights". He is selling the idea that people shouldn't reproduce because it is "cruel" to have babies.

South African philosopher David Benatar, author of a fine book with an arresting title: “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.” One of Benatar’s arguments trades on something like the asymmetry noted earlier. To bring into existence someone who will suffer is, Benatar argues, to harm that person, but to bring into existence someone who will have a good life is not to benefit him or her. Few of us would think it right to inflict severe suffering on an innocent child, even if that were the only way in which we could bring many other children into the world. Yet everyone will suffer to some extent, and if our species continues to reproduce, we can be sure that some future children will suffer severely. Hence continued reproduction will harm some children severely, and benefit none.

...

So why don’t we make ourselves the last generation on earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized then no sacrifices would be required — we could party our way into extinction!

In short, he is laying down a persuasive argument for people to die out. What he doesn't tell you is that he wants to free up the space for his beloved animals and all their "rights". The guy is a monster. He would rather kill humans than lab rats!

If you think I misunderstood his piece, he has written a follow-up piece to "clarify" the positions he put forward in the earlier piece:

But “Last Generation?” isn’t a piece about overpopulation or environmental destruction, and it makes no assumptions about whether developed countries can cut down on consumption. It just isn’t about that question at all. It asks a deeper question, one not dependent on the environmental constraints on our planet, nor on the number of people now on Earth. Even if there were only 1 million humans on this planet, all living at the level of an average citizen of, say, Switzerland, we could still ask whether it would be a good thing to have children in order to continue the species.

Sure... Peter Singer claims to be pro-human and claims to be "misunderstood". He makes this statement:

This brings me to the second common misunderstanding found in the comments. I was surprised by how many readers assumed that my answer to the title question of my essay was “Yes.” Perhaps they stopped reading before they got to the last paragraph, in which I say that I think that life is, for most people, worth living, and that a world with people in it is better than one without any sentient beings in it.

But the fact of the matter is that he values animals over humans and has a dim view of "human rights". For all his effusive claims to "love humans" he keeps coming back to this point:

These issues do matter. Even if relatively few people engage in ethical thinking before deciding whether to reproduce, the decisions are important for those who do. And since public policies affect the birthrate, we ought to be giving some thought to whether it is, other things being equal, good for there to be fewer people. Of course, in our present environmental crisis other things are not equal, but the underlying question of the value of bringing human beings into the world should still play a role in decisions that affect the size of future generations.

From Wikipedia, here is some text about Singer's book Animal Liberation:

Published in 1975, Animal Liberation has been cited as a formative influence on leaders of the modern animal liberation movement. The central argument of the book is an expansion of the utilitarian idea that 'the greatest good of the greatest number' is the only measure of good or ethical behaviour. Singer argues that there is no reason not to apply this to other animals. He introduced and popularized the term "speciesism", which was originally coined by Richard D. Ryder, to describe the practice of privileging humans over other animals.

My response to this line of thinking is that if it merely a utilitarian calculation in which no species is privileged, then all higher forms of life would be "voted off the planet" because the domains of Archaea and Eubacteria outnumber the Protista, Fungi, Plantae, and Animalia by thousands to one. And they outnumber the Animalia by billions to one. And they outnumber humans by billions of billions of billions to one. So we get voted off the planet under Peter Singer's "ethics".

Personally I don't think I have to defer to insects. I respect them. But they have no rights that supersede mine. And anything simpler than insects doesn't even register in my "ethical" calculations.

The Inheritors of Iraq

So, the US went into Iraq with guns blazing to help topple one tyrant in order to set up a Shiite theocracy and a pseudo-independent Kurdish province in which thugs rule. Here's a bit from a Washington Post article on how the Kurish "Democratic" Party of President Massoud Barzani, the client propped up by US blood and treasure:

More than a thousand Kurds poured into the streets of the northern Iraqi city of Sulaimaniyah Wednesday in a growing wave of outrage, blaming authorities for the kidnapping and murder of a young Kurdish journalist.

Throngs of protesters waving banners and carrying pictures of 23-year-old Sardasht Othman marched through the city in the largest protest yet since the discovery of Othman's body May 3. There have been nearly a dozen demonstrations over the past week in Iraq's Kurdish autonomous region calling for his killers to be brought to justice.

Othman was snatched in front of the campus of University of Salahuddin in the regional capital of Irbil, and his handcuffed and bullet-riddled body was found four days later.

"We accuse the Democratic Party and its security forces of assassinating Sardasht because they are in full control of Irbil," said writer Nabaz Goran, referring to the Kurdish party running the capital.

...

The accusations have particularly focused on the Kurdish Democratic Party of President Massoud Barzani. The party controls Irbil and has been accused by international rights groups of being intolerant of criticism.

...

Othman was a reporter for the biweekly Ashtiname newspaper and contributed to a number of Kurdish websites, often writing about corruption, according to the online Kurdistan Post, to which he also contributed. He reportedly had received threats over his articles.

His friends say he particularly enraged authorities with a piece he wrote for the Kurdistan Post saying the only way to become successful in such a nepotistic society would be to marry the president's daughter.

His supporters say his body was dumped outside the Kurdish region in Mosul, which has been a haven for al-Qaida in Iraq, to shift the focus away from Kurdish authorities.

"There are 11 checkpoints between Irbil and Mosul and it would be difficult to pass them with a dead body in the car unless vehicle belongs to the government," Karawan Saleh, a member in the security committee of Kurdish parliament, told The AP.

The US has suffered 4,390 dead and a long term cost of about $1 trillion to replace one horror story with another. And the cost is not just the cost to the US. The Iraqis have lost around 120,000 people and have had their country devastated by foreign war and civil war for 7 long years.

Is nobody accountable in the US for making such horrible policy mistakes?

Justice American Style

Don't underestimate the ability of the American judicial system to act more stupidly than you can believe possible. Declaring that corporations are persons and therefore have rights to spend unlimited sums on political advertising was a brilliant moment since the same law says that real persons, you know, the living breathing type, are not allowed to spend unlimited sums (see here and here). But since corporations are "persons", they are given rights as "persons" that go beyond what mere mortal persons have. Got that?

Well, the American legal system has just lowered the bar yet again. Here's a report on Politico.com:

The Pentagon has barred four journalists from the trial of Guantanamo prisoner Omar Khadr because they allegedly reported the name of a military interrogator who happened to testify Thursday that he tried to frighten Khadr with the possibility of being raped in prison.

"We threw some people out of there today because they disclosed the identity of a protected witness," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Thursday afternoon. "He had been clearly identified as someone who needed to be protected....These newspapers identified him by name."

The journalists kicked out of the proceedings, currently in the midst of pre-trial hearings, are Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald and McClatchy Newspapers, Michelle Shephard of the Toronto Star, Paul Koring of the Globe & Mail, and Steven Edwards of Canwest Newspapers.

They were ejected for violating ground rules which bar the identification of protected witnesses. The reporters have noted that the name of the interrogator in question, Joshua Claus, was widely reported in the Canadian press before the trial. In fact, Claus gave one or more interviews in 2008 about his interrogation of Khadr.

The American Civil Liberties Union issued a statement decrying as "nonsensical" the move against the four reporters. "That reporters are being punished for disclosing information that has been publicly available for years is nothing short of absurd – any gag order that covers this kind of information is not just overbroad but nonsensical," the ACLU's Jameel Jaffer said. "Plainly, no legitimate government interest is served by suppressing information that is already well known."

Asked why reporters were being punished for reporting a publicly available name, Pentagon spokesman Col. David Lapan said any previous stories or interview naming Claus was irrelevant. "That doesn't change the fact that his identity was protected in the courtroom during this hearing. He wasn't 'Interrogator #1' when he was previously interviewed," Col. Lapan said.

Claus previously pled guilty to abusing another detainee at the U.S.-run prison at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. He was sentenced to five months in jail.

It is funny. The US is a signatory to the UN prohibitions on "child soldiers" and "torture" but doesn't apply that law to itself. It has taken a 15 year old and held him for 9 years for the "crime" of attacking US soldiers who were in the process of attacking the outpost in which he was located. It isn't even clear he did anything, but that hasn't stopped the torture meisters at Guantanamo from using all their special "tricks" over the years. This case is despicable, but the US refuses to release this victim of their system. It is now "trying" him but using torture confessions as the only real evidence against him. It is a farce that is being passed off as "justice".

Don't get me wrong. His father, Ahmed Said Khadr, was a slimy character who was fully involved with Al Qaeda. His wife and children were indoctrinated and mouthed the crazy hatreds of the father. The youngest son is Omar Khadr. I can believe the kid mouthed the crazy propaganda of the father, but at 15 he was a "child soldier" and didn't really know enough to be a "member" of Al Qaeda and shouldn't be treated harshly like he has been by the US military.

This is the case against Omar Khadr (from Wikipedia):

In February 2008, the Pentagon accidentally released documents that revealed that although Khadr was present in the house, there was no other evidence that he had thrown the grenade. In fact, military officials had originally reported that another of the surviving militants had thrown the grenade just before being killed, and later rewrote their report to implicate Khadr instead.

For this, Omar Khadr has been tortured for 9 years and imprisoned and not given a trial. That's American "justice".