Panglossian Notes

Just when you think

something may actually come to a head in the USA, an event arrives that could help to change the corporate media's simpleton mind set.

Of course, I'm talking about the new Mexican flu virus vs the USA as a world class official torturer.

I wonder, skeptic that I am, whether the Obama crew in the White House bunker aren't a bit ambivalent just now [I assume politicians, and their flunkies, are only really interested in the welfare of their constituents and to do good for them but, but, but to be a politician is ...] :

"What should we hope for, eh? That everything works well and this new flu isn't the modern 1918 disaster. But if it is a real crisis we could bury the torture mess, right. Hey have you washed your hands? But at least it could get "it" - torture - off the front pages. Hey, think of it as a Gaza type event. Lots and lots of attention for a week or so but now the average citizen can't ever spell Gaza. So, flu will supplant torture as the public focus. Hey wash your hands, eh. And remember those Mexican's have weak lungs so we the ones with clean hands should be alright?

Technorati Tags: Hey, wash your hands!, No, I'm serious wash your hands?, Politicians, Skeptical, Too funny?

And now for something completely different, eh! A Tar Sands tailing pond in Northumberland?

Yes Alberta, place of the wild rose, is an island, an island of ... . I'd say stupidity but it might offend my relatives, but this is stupid, right?

"The sea was blue, the beach was gold and the children skipping through the sand dunes seemed a testament to the healthy joys of holidays in the Canadian province of Alberta.

Tourist officials and the national government in Ottawa were delighted with the promotional clip, part of a £14m attempt to offset controversy over oil extraction in Alberta's beautiful wildlands.

But hours of sleuthing by a puzzled sailing enthusiast, aware that Alberta has no coastline, have revealed that the idyll was filmed 5,000 miles away across the Atlantic. The girl with the flying hair and her friend were romping on the sweep of sand at Beadnell Bay near Bamburgh, Northumberland, where the North Sea rolls in from Lindisfarne.

"We think it's quite funny - a landlocked province in Canada presenting an image of itself as an island," said Sheelagh Caygill of Northumberland Tourism, which is now fondly hoping to piggy-back on the international campaign. News of the gaffe is spreading like wildfire on the internet with tags such as: "Come to Alberta - no, wait, it's Britain."

The curious choice of a seaside beach for a place which has none, was spotted by Peter Bailey, a Canadian looking for places to take his dinghy. He initially thought that the scene might be set on one of Alberta's many lakes, whose sandy shores and unpolluted water are important to the tourism drive.

Canada tourist video shot in Northumbria
Martin Wainwright
The Guardian
Saturday 25 April 2009

My favorite excuse for being stupid came, of course, supposedly from stupid HQ,aka  PM Stevie, boy, Harper's office buried in the Langevin Block, from a mysterious Tom Olsen who doesn't appear on the official PMO communications org chart.

Olsen responded to questions about picturing Alberta "tar sands" capital of the "free world" that:

"the choice of Northumberland symbolised the fact that "Albertans are a worldly people".

He continued digging mining the hole by indicating that:

""There's no attempt to mislead here. The picture used just fitted the mood and tone of what we were trying to do."

Canada tourist video shot in Northumbria
Martin Wainwright
The Guardian
Saturday 25 April 2009

Technorati Tags: Oh! Canada?, Spin?, Stupid Canadian tricks, Stupidity, The Mission, Torture of the mind bending type

Background reading - Torture

The worst scars are in the mind: psychological torture

Hernán Reyes (pdf format)

Dr Hernán Reyes, MD, of the ICRC’s Assistance Division, is a specialist on medical aspects of detention and has visited numerous detention centres around the world.

Abstract

Torture during interrogation often includes methods that do not physically assault the body or cause actual physical pain – and yet entail severe psychological pain and suffering and profoundly disrupt the senses and personality. Solitary confinement and prolonged sleep deprivation are just two examples of these psychological torture methods. Even psychological methods which do not amount to ill-treatment when considered in isolation, amount to inhuman or degrading treatment or torture, when applied in conjunction with other techniques, cumulatively and/or over a long time. Often they are part and parcel of the whole torture process and constitute a ‘‘background environment’’ of harassment and duress. The ‘‘cumulation over time’ ’factor must thus be considered as part of a system of psychological torture.

Technorati Tags: The greatest force for good in history - Dick Cheney, The Mission, Torture, USA

Disappointment!

Have you noticed it?

A sense of disappointment. Hurt feelings? Naw, it's disappointment.

A clear realization of too much invested in a childish wish.

The cold realization you've been naive, suckered, foolish in hoping.

This is what I'm sensing, from what a fairly wide assortment of people are writing in blogs and comments since Thursday last. Of course I could just be transposing my own sense on to what others are writing.

Since Thursday, and confirmed by the White House chief of staff on Sunday everyone now knows that Obama is just a politician and unfortunately of the same old stripe we all seem to have grown accustom.

Since Thursday we know that there are two sets of law in the USA - one for the drones and none for the privileged others.

"This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke. We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history. But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.

Obama Statement on releasing torture memorandums
April 16, 2009

I can't wait 'til someone in the Obama regime drags out that chestnut, originated and made famous in the aftermath of Katrina by the Bush clan, "the blame game". It would have fit in perfectly with the hilarity of a Harvard trained lawyer's statement, in effect, dismissing the basis of the USAs justice system. Now that's change you can bank on, eh. Too, too funny, maybe.

But the most entertaining aspect of Obama's statement was the praise he heaped on US torturers, heros all:

"... it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution. The men and women of our intelligence community serve courageously on the front lines of a dangerous world. Their accomplishments are unsung and their names unknown, but because of their sacrifices, every single American is safer.

Obama Statement on releasing torture memorandums
April 16, 2009

I think this could be unprecedented in the annals of official thuggery, but I could be wrong, I don't have access to reference sources for most banana republics.

Didn't St. Augustine say something like 'the seat of mind is in memory.' Yes he did, so is the US about to enter another of it's many periods of being mindless - i.e. no memory - or, simply already being mindless, Obama needs to make sure the republic doesn't get to see its real self. One thinks of a Dorian Grey nation or to paraphrase Joe Friday: "All we want are the myths. Just the myths."

Technorati Tags: Obama, Outside view, Thugs, Torture

Torturing - fun on a Sunday afternoon - remembering the questions, eh.

Torture and Democracy
Darius Rejali
pages 478-479
Princeton University Press

Daschner is a reference to this, seen through A Fist Full of Euros eye and through the lens of, the bastion of mainstream indifference, the BBC.

Technorati Tags: books, Spin, Torture, USA

Thinking about torture and memorandums.

I have nothing significant to add to the debate (?) and the serious comments by bloggers I read regularly (Newshoggers, War in Context, A Tiny Revolution, Dennis Perrin, etc. etc. ...) about the torture memorandums recently released by President Obama before he headed South, but I do wonder somethings.

Mainly I wonder, why the USA would have chosen torture, we now know it did for certain, as a secret but official government policy?

Darius Rejali, in the introduction of his encyclopedic work* Torture and Democracy, says there are three main purposes for government torture: "to intimidate, to coerce false information, and to gather accurate security information".

Posing then, that haunting question: "But do these techniques work?", for their intended purpose.

I suspect, as does Rejali, that most would agree the first 2 reasons work for their intended purpose, i.e. torturing an individual will frighten the individual and can also be an efficient method for collecting false information, such as confessions for "show" trials say.

But does torture work to gather accurate security information?

Setting aside the first 2 reasons, past US government policy indicates that the answer for it, to the question above, was yes. The US government believed - some parts of the current US government maybe still do believe - that torturing an individual can result in accurate security information.

The 2 Michaels, Hayden and Mukasey, must believe it works. Why else their op-ed piece. [I'm suppressing my skeptical inclination to consider it as a preemptive defense for their involvement, either actively or passively, in the government policy; or, of course, maybe as an attempt to cover their embarrassement with being publicly exposed as liars extraordinaire.]

So, as Rejadi tongue-in-cheek wonders, where is the General Accounting Office report that compares the results of the US torture program to the usual mundane intelligence activities in gathering accurate security information to foil terrorist activity.

Yes where is it?

As I said I'm wondering.

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*I was lucky enough to receive Rejali's book as a present this past Christmas, not festive season reading maybe, but interesting and a useful reference book for the future. Segments of the book are available online at Google Book. I recommend, if nothing else, reading the Introduction or at least checking out the Table of Contents. Chapter 24, the last in the book is available though it doesn't appear in the TOC.

Technorati Tags: books, sadism, Security, The Program, Torture, Torture vs good intentions

Silliness of Spring?

So the new catch phrase seems to be "green shoots". As in "green shoots" have been spotted peaking out of the economic ground?

I don't remember hearing this particular gem the last time we were in a down turn, but then again maybe I wasn't paying enough attention to glib phraseology being in a department in the middle of it.

What I do remember from the last time - not the dot.com blip, the one just before - was that it was difficult to get the political masters, in this part of North America, to even mouth that dark R-word recession. Hard maybe to see "green shoots" if you think your in the harvest season, maybe.

Whatever, "green shoots" is a nice phrase, if you're a gardener or just a casual observer of the ground as you actually walk around, in spring. I wonder if economic gurus have been reading (re-reading?) Jerzy Kosinski's Being There or, as some others have recently considered, watching the movie with Peter Sellers.

I have lots of other silly phrases that make me wonder, but I'm sticking with "green shoots" for this spring.

Incidentally the earliest reference I can find that mentions "green shoots", using Google, was back in April, 1993 when Patty Ashdown was still head of the Liberal Democrats. The phrase then was being used during a period of a certain political recession:

The Independent
April 20, 1993

Technorati Tags: Whatever, Wondering, Words, writing

Rosa

This all happened 3 weeks ago now when I was in Berlin and waking everywhere with my son. Nice to have someone to walk with and also chit-chat with.

__________________________________

Ok, eh, my hands are bit chilly.

It's that time. Not quite Spring, screw Spring, my hands have no feeling. OK, OK.

So Rosa who, eh.

Luxembourg?

Yes.

Such a charmer.

Yes, a charming, charmer. Out the back of the zoo in Berlin, the Tiergarden is where Rosa has a unique site - graffitied yes, sorry, but now everywhere, as is all Berlin - where they dumped her body into the canal.

And, yes the the zoo sounds are interesting as we walked along the canal, but I could hardly keep from crying as I walked with my son back into the heart of Berlin from the very hard to find site. Then we went for a currywurst.

Technorati Tags: Whatever

The Fish is on it:

But, at least the corporate media will, if they have the courage, maybe be able to take pictures of the real caskets at Dover. And, of course, the "innocent" Afghans and Pakistanis killed by the "yes we can" drones will get a press release apology from the changinator. What a guy, eh?

Technorati Tags: Bullshit is bullshit, Politicians ugh!!, POTUS aka the Decider

Oh, god! Could this be true! What more, I wonder, maybe expected?

"The soil beneath Lake Albert is turning to sulphuric acid ... ."

An interesting set of views of Lake Albert, AU, thanks to Google Maps, the road map view first, and then, the satellite shot. I prefer the dream of the road map. Just something about that nice robin's egg blue colour eh.

Technorati Tags: A hot hot world, A PLAN, Global Warming, Global Warming Policy