Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004): Today's Torture Report"
All I can do, other than campaign against Bush, is to keep reading the stories and point to them. Now the questions being raised:
1. What happened to the Iraqi scientists that were captured and never released? It seems likely they were tortured. Do some fear the stories living men would tell?
2. The torture of "high value targets" descibed in the Denver Post goes well beyond the descriptions in the Atlantic of last year. It sounds as though the results were sometimes fatal.
Campone. Rumsfeld. Cheney. Bush.
Thursday, May 20, 2004
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
A bit further down the road ...
The Onion | U.S. To Fight Terror With Terror
At least our current regime supports satirists.
WASHINGTON, DC—In a response to recent acts of extreme violence against Americans in Iraq and mounting criticism of U.S. military policy at home, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced the government's new strategy of fighting terror with terror Monday.
"Look, in order to catch a rat, you gotta think like one," Rumsfeld said in a grainy and degraded videotape message filmed at an unknown location and released to CNN Monday. "We've been pussy-footing around the war on terrorism for years. All that time, the answer was right in front of us: In order to wipe out terror around the globe, once and for all, we've gotta beat them at their own game."
"We tried playing fair," Rumsfeld continued. "But how can you play by the rules when your opponent doesn't even know the rules? You don't bring a knife to a gunfight. That's just the way it is, folks. It's a dog-eat-dog world."
On the seven-minute tape, Rumsfeld is joined by counter-terrorist leaders Vice-President Dick Cheney and Attorney General John Ashcroft, each seated on folding chairs in front of an American flag. Ashcroft described some tactics the government currently uses—pre-dawn assaults on civilian targets and subjecting potential stateside traitors to psychological intimidation—as a "small step in the right direction."
"I can't really say what we have planned for the future," Rumsfeld said. "As terrorists, fear and uncertainty will be our best weapons. Let me just say that the gloves are off. It is inevitable that indiscriminate attacks will be carried out, and innocents will lose their lives, but the end will justify the means...
At least our current regime supports satirists.
The creator as a careless child ... or a malfunctioning copy machine ..
The Big Lab Experiment - Was our universe created by design? By Jim Holt (Slate)
Jim Holt writes the "Egghead" column for Slate. He also writes for The New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine.
These ideas have been brewing in various circles for at least 10 years, and I'm sure there are historical antecedents. I think this is in the "blind watchmaker" category, as in Votaire and Spinoza and others but definitely not Einstein. See also an oddly related recent post of mine.
This is the first time, however, I've come across the idea that such a creator might embed messages in the fundamental constants. Perhaps if one peered long enough into the cosmic background radiation the message might emerge. Psychoactive agents and temporally reversed vinyl could be helpful.
Holt (the author) and Linde (the physicist) are writing with ironic humor. I wager, however, that they are quite serious. Our universe used to seem superficially complex, but potentially internally sensible and aesthetically pleasing. Those were the glory days of Einstein. Now it is hard to deny that the universe looks profoundly absurd and weird.
Linde is demanding too much of the likely creator, however. If in one generation a hacker physicist can create a universe, then a few short generations later it will be, perhaps literally, child's play. If it can be done at all, it will be done be entities noble and decadent, grave and frivolous, by entities who might spend a lifetime contemplating a single creation, or by entities who might spew out half-baked concoctions by whim or worse.
As to who our creator most likely resembles, we need only ask -- which sort of entity would create more universes? The grave, serious and responsible, or the absent minded and frivolous child? Or perhaps, a defective machine spewing out trillions of copies of a single template.
Whichever is the most prolific, that is our most likely creator.
Jim Holt writes the "Egghead" column for Slate. He also writes for The New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine.
Was our universe created? That is, was it brought into being by an entity with a mind? ...
... To get a better understanding of this matter, I thought it might be wise to consult the man who has done more than anyone else to explain how our universe got going. His name is Andrei Linde, and he is a physicist at Stanford University. ...
... Among the many curious implications of Linde's theory, one stands out for our present purposes: It doesn't take all that much to create a universe. Resources on a cosmic scale are not required...
"When I invented chaotic inflation theory, I found that the only thing you needed to get a universe like ours started is a hundred-thousandth of a gram of matter," Linde told me in his Russian-accented English when I reached him by phone at Stanford. "That's enough to create a small chunk of vacuum that blows up into the billions and billions of galaxies we see around us. It looks like cheating, but that's how the inflation theory works—all the matter in the universe gets created from the negative energy of the gravitational field. So, what's to stop us from creating a universe in a lab? We would be like gods!"
... then Linde thought of another channel of communication between creator and creation—the only one possible, as far as he could tell. The creator, by manipulating the cosmic seed in the right way, has the power to ordain certain physical parameters of the universe he ushers into being. So says the theory. He can determine, for example, what the numerical ratio of the electron's mass to the proton's will be. Such ratios, called constants of nature, look like arbitrary numbers to us: There is no obvious reason they should take one value rather than another. (Why, for instance, is the strength of gravity in our universe determined by a number with the digits 6673?) But the creator, by fixing certain values for these dozens of constants, could write a subtle message into the very structure of the universe. And, as Linde hastened to point out, such a message would be legible only to physicists.
"You might take this all as a joke," he said, "but perhaps it is not entirely absurd. It may be the explanation for why the world we live in is so weird. On the evidence, our universe was created not by a divine being, but by a physicist hacker."
These ideas have been brewing in various circles for at least 10 years, and I'm sure there are historical antecedents. I think this is in the "blind watchmaker" category, as in Votaire and Spinoza and others but definitely not Einstein. See also an oddly related recent post of mine.
This is the first time, however, I've come across the idea that such a creator might embed messages in the fundamental constants. Perhaps if one peered long enough into the cosmic background radiation the message might emerge. Psychoactive agents and temporally reversed vinyl could be helpful.
Holt (the author) and Linde (the physicist) are writing with ironic humor. I wager, however, that they are quite serious. Our universe used to seem superficially complex, but potentially internally sensible and aesthetically pleasing. Those were the glory days of Einstein. Now it is hard to deny that the universe looks profoundly absurd and weird.
Linde is demanding too much of the likely creator, however. If in one generation a hacker physicist can create a universe, then a few short generations later it will be, perhaps literally, child's play. If it can be done at all, it will be done be entities noble and decadent, grave and frivolous, by entities who might spend a lifetime contemplating a single creation, or by entities who might spew out half-baked concoctions by whim or worse.
As to who our creator most likely resembles, we need only ask -- which sort of entity would create more universes? The grave, serious and responsible, or the absent minded and frivolous child? Or perhaps, a defective machine spewing out trillions of copies of a single template.
Whichever is the most prolific, that is our most likely creator.
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
United Press International: Army, CIA want torture truths exposed
United Press International: Army, CIA want torture truths exposed
Dishonor may not mean much to Bush and Rumsfeld, but it means a lot to the US army.
... Over the past weekend and into this week, devastating new allegations have emerged putting Stephen Cambone, the first Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, firmly in the crosshairs and bringing a new wave of allegations cascading down on the head of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, when he scarcely had time to catch his breath from the previous ones.
Even worse for Rumsfeld and his coterie of neo-conservative true believers who have run the Pentagon for the past 3½ years, three major institutions in the Washington power structure have decided that after almost a full presidential term of being treated with contempt and abuse by them, it's payback time.
Those three institutions are: The United States Army, the Central Intelligence Agency and the old, relatively moderate but highly experienced Republican leadership in the United States Senate.
None of those groups is chopped liver: Taken together they comprise a devastating Grand Slam.
Dishonor may not mean much to Bush and Rumsfeld, but it means a lot to the US army.
Kaplan: the scandal has legs
Locked in Abu Ghraib - The prison scandal keeps getting worse for the Bush administration. By Fred Kaplan
Lewinski taught us a scandal with sex had legs. This is a porn, torture, spy, lie, and snuff scandal.
Clinton gave us an extramarital affair.
Bush gave us this.
I think historians will have to award the prize to GWB.
... Third, Seymour Hersh seems to be on his hottest roll as an investigative reporter in 30 years, and the editors of every major U.S. daily newspaper aren't going to stand for it. "We're having our lunch handed to us by a weekly magazine!" one can imagine them shouting in their morning meetings. Scoops and counterscoops will be the order of the day.
All of these hound-hunts will be fueled by the extraordinary levels of internecine feuding that have marked this administration for years. Until recently, Rumsfeld, with White House assistance, has quelled dissenters, but the already-rattling lid is almost certain to blow off soon. As has been noted, Secretary of State Colin Powell, tiring of his good-soldier routine, is attacking his adversaries in the White House and Pentagon with eyebrow-raising openness. Hersh's story states that Rumsfeld's secret operation stemmed from his "longstanding desire to wrest control of America's clandestine and paramilitary operations from the CIA." Hersh's sources—many of them identified as intelligence officials—seem to be spilling, in part, to wrest back control. Uniformed military officers, who have long disliked Rumsfeld and his E-Ring crew for a lot of reasons, are also speaking out. Hersh and Newsweek both report that senior officers from the Judge Advocate General's Corps went berserk when they found out about Rumsfeld's secret operation, to the point of taking their concerns to the New York Bar Association's committee on international human rights.
The knives are out all over Washington—lots of knives, unsheathed and sharpened in many different backroom parlors, for many motives and many throats. In short, this story is not going away.
Lewinski taught us a scandal with sex had legs. This is a porn, torture, spy, lie, and snuff scandal.
Clinton gave us an extramarital affair.
Bush gave us this.
I think historians will have to award the prize to GWB.
Monday, May 17, 2004
IQ and Presidential Preference - an extraordinary correlation
UPDATE 5/24/04: The Economist was taken in by this hoax, and so was I. Ok, so I did start to wonder how the heck anyone would try to measure IQ at a state level. I assumed they were extrapolating based on SAT scores.
The Economist did put up some proxy measures for IQ, these showed no correlation with voting patterns.
My apologies to Mississipppi.
Economist.com | The electoral week
The Economist reprints a chart from "IQ and the Wealth of Nations". Of the 10 "smartest" states, 9 voted for Gore (NH, tied w/ Maryland for #7, voted for Bush). The average IQ of these states is 103 to 113. (Connecticut is the "smartest".)
Of the 10 least gifted states, 10/10 voted for Bush. Mississippi came in last with an average IQ of 85.
That's one hell of a correlaton. It suggests that the "swing states" have an average IQ of about 100.
The Economist did put up some proxy measures for IQ, these showed no correlation with voting patterns.
My apologies to Mississipppi.
Economist.com | The electoral week
The Economist reprints a chart from "IQ and the Wealth of Nations". Of the 10 "smartest" states, 9 voted for Gore (NH, tied w/ Maryland for #7, voted for Bush). The average IQ of these states is 103 to 113. (Connecticut is the "smartest".)
Of the 10 least gifted states, 10/10 voted for Bush. Mississippi came in last with an average IQ of 85.
That's one hell of a correlaton. It suggests that the "swing states" have an average IQ of about 100.
Sunday, May 16, 2004
Conflict Map: Nobel eMuseum
Conflict Map
This is staggering. What a terrible view of humanity. North America & Australia/NZ are almost uniquely quiet.
This is staggering. What a terrible view of humanity. North America & Australia/NZ are almost uniquely quiet.
Saturday, May 15, 2004
Hersh: Copper Green -- the special access program that went sour at Al Ghraib
The New Yorker
Hersh's contacts are presumably among those who are embittered. Hersh points the finger directly at Rumsfeld, and indirectly at Bush. Hersh also connects Rumsfeld & Cambone to William "Islam is Satan" Boykin.
There are many puzzling aspects of this case that have not yet been reported. There's a lot of work to do for any journalists who still care for the truth.
PS. The New Yorker's web pages have a curious behavior. When one copies and pastes text, letters are missing. I've not seen this anywhere else -- I wonder if it's done to discourage blogging. Using OS X print preview one can copy and paste without losing any letters.
The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.
According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.
... Cambone then made another crucial decision, the former intelligence official told me: not only would he bring the SAP’s rules into the prisons; he would bring some of the Army military-intelligence officers working inside the Iraqi prisons under the SAP’sauspices. “So here are fundamentally good soldiers— military-intelligence guys—being told that no rules apply,” the former official, who has extensive knowledge of the special-access programs, added. “And, as far as they’re concerned, this is a covert operation, and it’s to be kept within Defense Department channels.”
The military-police prison guards, the former official said, included “recycled hillbillies from Cumberland, Maryland.” He was referring to members of the 372nd Military Police Company. Seven members of the company are now facing charges for their role in the abuse at Abu Ghraib. “How are these guys from Cumberland going to know anything? The Army Reserve doesn’t know what it’s doing.”
... The only difficulty, the former official added, is that, “as soon as you enlarge the secret program beyond the oversight capability of experienced people, you lose control. We’ve never had a case where a special-access program went sour—and this goes back to the Cold War.”
Hersh's contacts are presumably among those who are embittered. Hersh points the finger directly at Rumsfeld, and indirectly at Bush. Hersh also connects Rumsfeld & Cambone to William "Islam is Satan" Boykin.
There are many puzzling aspects of this case that have not yet been reported. There's a lot of work to do for any journalists who still care for the truth.
PS. The New Yorker's web pages have a curious behavior. When one copies and pastes text, letters are missing. I've not seen this anywhere else -- I wonder if it's done to discourage blogging. Using OS X print preview one can copy and paste without losing any letters.
DeLong: The Reign of George the Feckless
Doesn't Anybody Read Max Weber Anymore?: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal
The reign of George the Feckless. I like that.
Things that were known in the reign of Anne the Protestant should not be forgotten in the reign of George the Feckless.
The reign of George the Feckless. I like that.
The Soviets had Pravda, the GOP has it all
Salon.com Books | The mighty windbags
Salon excerpts sections from David Brock's book. He's the "journalist who came in from the Right". My own reading is identical. What annoys me is how the New York Times and The Economist bought into this propaganda. Gore was savaged by the Right, but it was the craven incompetence of mainstream, respected, journalists that won the day for Bush. Whether through laziness, greed, incompetence, or corruption, journalists who knew better stayed quiet. I don't blame Limbaugh for spreading lies, I blame Safire and the NYT Editorial page for not exposing the lies.
I confess wondered about Hilary's "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy". I thought she was making excuses. I'm sorry Hillary, you were right.
The billionaires of the extreme right have seized control of American dialog. We need the billionaires of the rational middle to step down from Olympus and balance the rabid right.
The mighty windbags
Thirty years ago, conservatives embarked on a plan to subvert journalism and skew America to the right. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
By David Brock
Salon excerpts sections from David Brock's book. He's the "journalist who came in from the Right". My own reading is identical. What annoys me is how the New York Times and The Economist bought into this propaganda. Gore was savaged by the Right, but it was the craven incompetence of mainstream, respected, journalists that won the day for Bush. Whether through laziness, greed, incompetence, or corruption, journalists who knew better stayed quiet. I don't blame Limbaugh for spreading lies, I blame Safire and the NYT Editorial page for not exposing the lies.
I confess wondered about Hilary's "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy". I thought she was making excuses. I'm sorry Hillary, you were right.
The billionaires of the extreme right have seized control of American dialog. We need the billionaires of the rational middle to step down from Olympus and balance the rabid right.
Friday, May 14, 2004
Kaplan too is done with Bush
The Buck Stops … Where? - Stop blaming your henchmen, Mr. President. By Fred Kaplan
Another one turns against Bush.
In the two years since the Pentagon's first attack plan, Zarqawi has been linked not just to Berg's execution but, according to NBC, 700 other killings in Iraq. If Bush had carried out that attack back in June 2002, the killings might not have happened. More: The case for war (as the White House feared) might not have seemed so compelling. Indeed, the war itself might not have happened.
Another one turns against Bush.
The other heroes: those who refuse orders to do evil, those who intervene
The New York Times > International > Psychology: Pressure to Go Along With Abuse Is Strong, but Some Soldiers Find Strength to Refuse
Six years ago three heroes of the My Lai massacre were finally honored. Perhaps 30 years from now these three will be honored. They are true heroes.
Pressure to Go Along With Abuse Is Strong, but Some Soldiers Find Strength to Refuse
By ANAHAD O'CONNOR
Published: May 14, 2004
The images of prisoner abuse still trickling out of Iraq show a side of human behavior that psychologists have sought to understand for decades. But the murky reports of a handful of soldiers who refused to take part bring to light a behavior psychologists find even more puzzling: disobedience.
Buried in his report earlier this year on Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba praised the actions of three men who tried to stop the mistreatment of Iraqi detainees. They are nowhere to be seen in the portraits of brutality that have touched off outrage around the world.
Although details of their actions are sketchy, it is known that one soldier, Lt. David O. Sutton, put an end to one incident and alerted his commanders. William J. Kimbro, a Navy dog handler, 'refused to participate in improper interrogations despite significant pressure' from military intelligence, according to the report. And Specialist Joseph M. Darby gave military police the evidence that sounded the alarm...
...The power to resist coercion reflects what psychologists call internal locus of control, or the ability to determine one's own destiny. People at the other end of the scale, with external locus of control, are more heavily influenced by authority figures. They prefer to put their fate in the hands of others.
"If they fail a test, it's the teacher's fault; if they do poorly at a job, it's the boss's fault," said Dr. Thomas Ollendick, a professor of psychology at Virginia Tech. "They put the blame for everything outside of themselves. They are high in conformity because they believe someone else in charge."
The average person, research shows, falls somewhere in the middle of the scale. People who voluntarily enlist in the military, knowing they will take orders, Dr. Ollendick suggested, may be more likely to conform. "These are people who are being told what to do," he said. "The ones who are conforming from the outset feel they can't change the system they're in. Those who blow the whistle can go above the situation and survive. They can basically endure whatever negative consequences might come from their actions."
Six years ago three heroes of the My Lai massacre were finally honored. Perhaps 30 years from now these three will be honored. They are true heroes.
Friedman: Finally gives up on Bush altogether
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Dancing Alone
Next the Economist will admit it made a terrible mistake. They've been coming close to an apology ...
My mistake was thinking that the Bush team believed it, too. I thought the administration would have to do the right things in Iraq — from prewar planning and putting in enough troops to dismissing the secretary of defense for incompetence — because surely this was the most important thing for the president and the country. But I was wrong. There is something even more important to the Bush crowd than getting Iraq right, and that's getting re-elected and staying loyal to the conservative base to do so.
Next the Economist will admit it made a terrible mistake. They've been coming close to an apology ...
Thursday, May 13, 2004
Medal winners
INTEL DUMP
Two football fields. I can't imagine what this guy is like in person. There are more awards described in the same posting.
While leading his platoon north on Highway 1 toward Ad Diwaniyah, Chontosh's platoon moved into a coordinated ambush of mortars, rocket propelled grenades and automatic weapons fire. With coalitions tanks blocking the road ahead, he realized his platoon was caught in a kill zone.
He had his driver move the vehicle through a breach along his flank, where he was immediately taken under fire from an entrenched machine gun. Without hesitation, Chontosh ordered the driver to advanced directly at the enemy position enabling his .50 caliber machine gunner to silence the enemy.
He then directed his driver into the enemy trench, where he exited his vehicle and began to clear the trench with an M16A2 service rifle and 9 millimeter pistol. His ammunition depleted, Chontosh, with complete disregard for his safety, twice picked up discarded enemy rifles and continued his ferocious attack.
When a Marine following him found an enemy rocket propelled grenade launcher, Chontosh used it to destroy yet another group of enemy soldiers.
When his audacious attack ended, he had cleared over 200 meters of the enemy trench, killing more than 20 enemy soldiers and wounding several others.
Two football fields. I can't imagine what this guy is like in person. There are more awards described in the same posting.
National electronic Library for Health - United Kindgom
National electronic Library for Health
This looks potentially interesting. I don't think we have anything quite like it in the US.
This looks potentially interesting. I don't think we have anything quite like it in the US.
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