Thirty Seconds To Vacation.

Conditions: Raining, awful.



CIA Tortures, Lies, Destroys Evidence, Has Coffee For Breakfast.

The big news this week has been the revelation that the CIA destroyed some videotapes that portrayed them torturing detainees for information back in 2005, despite being under a court order to not destroy evidence of detainee abuse.

The CIA destroyed the tapes in November 2005. That June, U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. had ordered the Bush administration to safeguard "all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay."

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler issued a nearly identical order that July.

At the time, that seemed to cover all detainees in U.S. custody. But Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the terrorism suspects whose interrogations were videotaped and then destroyed, weren't at Guantanamo Bay. They were prisoners that existed off the books - and apparently beyond the scope of the court's order.

Attorneys say that might not matter. David H. Remes, a lawyer for Yemeni citizen Mahmoad Abdah and others, asked Kennedy this week to schedule a hearing on the issue.

Though Remes acknowledged the tapes might not be covered by Kennedy's order, he said, "It is still unlawful for the government to destroy evidence, and it had every reason to believe that these interrogation records would be relevant to pending litigation concerning our client."

- Truthout.org

Are we surprised? Really? One would think it quite obvious that the CIA would get rid of these tapes. It seems to me that the scandal now isn't so much that the CIA is torturing people, but that they had the gall to try and cover it up - as if the crime itself is forgiven but the attempt to not get caught is even worse. But there may be a flow-on effect to the destruction of the record of what the men said under torture.

When the CIA destroyed those prisoner interrogation videotapes, was it also destroying the truth about 9/11? After all, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, the basic narrative of what happened on that day-and the definition of the enemy in this war on terror that George W. Bush launched in response to the tragedy-comes from the CIA's account of what those prisoners told their torturers. The commission was never allowed to interview the prisoners, or speak with those who did, and was instead forced to rely on what the CIA was willing to relay.

On the matter of the existence of the tapes, we know the CIA lied, not only to the 9/11 Commission but to Congress as well. Given that the Bush administration has for six years refused those prisoners any sort of public legal exposure, why should we believe what we've been told about what may turn out to be the most important transformative event in our nation's history? On the basis of what the CIA claimed the tortured prisoners said, President Bush launched a "Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT), an endless war that threatens to bankrupt our society both financially and morally.

How important to the 9/11 Commission Report were those "key witnesses"? Check out the disclaimer on Page 146 about the commission's sourcing of the main elements laid out in its narrative:

Chapters 5 and 7 rely heavily on information obtained from captured al Qaeda members. ... Assessing the truth of statements by these witnesses ... is challenging. Our access to them has been limited to the review of intelligence reports based on communications received from the locations where the actual interrogation took place. We submitted questions for use in the interrogations, but had no control over whether, when, or how questions of particular interest would be asked. Nor were we allowed to talk to the interrogators so that we could better judge the credibility of the detainees and clarify ambiguities in the reporting. We were told that our requests might disrupt the sensitive interrogation process.

- Truthout.org

So, it's possible we're through the looking glass here. The reasons for the global war on terror were based on things that were said under duress (problem number 1), which are no longer available as evidence, meaning we'll have to take what was said (and so the conclusions made from it), on faith (which is problem number 2).



The Danger of Misinformation.

Back during the run up to Gulf War 2: Oil Harder, President Bush and his cabal made mention of how Iraq probably had something to do with the attacks on 9/11. Of course that was a pack of lies, and surely by now we all are aware of th...

I have now received three (3) student papers that discuss Iraq’s attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11. All three papers mention it as an aside to another point. I’ve had two papers on the virtue of forgiveness that argue that if we had just forgiven Iraq for the 9/11 attacks, we wouldn’t be at war right now. I just read a paper on the problem of evil which asked why God allowed “the Iraq’s” to attack us on 9/11. The thing that upsets me most here is that the the students don’t just believe that that Iraq was behind 9/11. This is a big fact in their minds, that leaps out at them, whenever they think about the state of the world.

- crookedtimber.org

And this is what happens when giant lies are swept under the carpet: the carpet starts rotting.



Mission:Afghani Freedom Update.

What's the latest from Afghanistan you say?

It is now a year and a half since British briefers in Kabul were giving absurdly optimistic forecasts about the ease of suppressing the Taliban. American bomb-search-and-destroy, said the first Nato joint commander, General David Richards, would be replaced by his strategy of winning hearts and minds. It was a sure-fire winner, he said, and would need no more than 3,000 British troops. John Reid, the then defence secretary, even talked of completing the Helmand deployment "without a shot being fired", and eliminating the opium harvest as "vital to the defeat of terrorism". The whole Helmand expedition has from the start been a suicide mission. Since last year, 81 British troops have died and untold numbers been maimed for life. The United Nations calculates that violent incidents have risen by 20-30% since the British took over Nato command, with as many as 5,000 local deaths. The policy of using high-altitude bombers did not cease, despite the pleadings of Afghanistan's elected ruler, Hamid Karzai, who knows that every bomb recruits 10 Taliban.

This week Musa Qala was attacked with B52s before the Americans and British entered what was left of the town. Who knows how many civilians have died? As the Americans found with Falluja in Iraq, there is no way you can "conquer" an urban settlement unless you intend to colonise it for ever. You can only stun it into temporary submission and long-term antipathy. There is no military solution in Afghanistan, not even a military start to a solution. Can Brown not see this?

Last year the British cut a deal with tribal leaders in Musa Qala that was clearly a dud - except insofar as cutting deals is going to be the only exit strategy from this morass. Gen Richards's model required an intensive follow-up of aid to win hearts and minds. This did not happen. The Taliban simply walked back in. Does nobody hold inquests into these murderous mistakes? And what now but a return to the status quo ante? A "small British platoon" cannot hold Musa Qala, nor can the Afghan army. The Taliban can go wherever they like outside the Kabul area.

- The Guardian

So in summary then: everything's going normally!



Word Of The Year: w00t

Merriam-Webster, a leading world dictionary, has announced the the most-voted-for word of the year for 2007, is "w00t", a term used by gamers to express joy.

Merriam-Webster's president, John Morse, said "w00t" was an ideal choice because it blends whimsy and new technology.

"It shows a really interesting thing that's going on in language. It's a term that's arrived only because we're now communicating electronically with each other," Morse said.

Gamers commonly substitute numbers and symbols for the letters they resemble, Morse says, creating what they call "l33t speak" — that's "leet" when spoken, short for "elite" to the rest of the world.

- Yahoo.com

I guess it's inevitable that language evolves, but snce we are in fact sentient beings and not a bunch of granite rocks dotted about a large beach I think we should be carefully dictating how that evolution occurs, rather than letting a bunch of oafs grunt out new bywords that we're supposed to take seriously. W00t? An actual proper word? Well then why don't we just go whole-hog and start clubbing each other over the head in order to express ourselves instead of using these newfangled voice boxes?



Not That Great A Lesson For The Kids.

Rock God Slash, formerly of Guns and Roses, talked in an interview about style of where he got his signature top hat from.

I always had a thing for hats; it really completes a look. Around 1985, early in Guns n' Roses career before we had a record deal, I was down on Melrose looking for something cool to wear to a gig that night at The Whiskey. I didn't have any money so that meant basically [it had to be] something I could steal. So I went to a store called Retail Slut and I saw this top hat and it just spoke to me. And, you know, once you decide that you actually like something, there's no turning back: you just have to get it. I put it on and it looked cool, but then I thought, "How do you steal a top hat?" It's not just something that you put in your pocket. So I grabbed it and walked out of the store and I got half way down the block and no one chased me down the street, so I got away with it.

- Huffpost.com

Okay, I'm down, he stole a cool hat and it turned into an icon. It's not exactly noble but it's at least a funny story. But what I found odd is that there was no indication in the interview of a) stealing being, you know, wrong, and b) Slash at some point paying them back after becoming an insanely-rich rock star. Just you know, putting it out there. For the kids.





Car Update.

Turns out the stuttering problem was just a broken wire under the distributor. I knew it was something electrical. So now we're back to normal. W00t!!



Breaking News: The Moon Still Looks The Same.

China's mission to the moon has brought some shocking results: the moon is in fact still there, and still looks the same as it did back in 1969. Shock!

BEIJING (AP)--China displayed the first image of the moon captured by its Chang-e 1 lunar probe at a gala ceremony Monday, marking the formal start of the satellite's mission to document the lunar landscape.

Unveiling the image at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center, Premier Wen Jiabao hailed it as a major step in "the Chinese race's 1,000-year-old dream" of exploring the moon.

China hopes the probe, launched late last month, will have surveyed the entire surface of the moon at least once by early next year.

- Space.com

So this then answers the long-standing question we had about the moon reconfiguring itself every 20-odd years. Thanks, China!



Film Review: Hitman.

Hitman is the stylish new film of the stylish video game. Unfortunately, it seems that playing the game is a prerequisite to watching the film. It must be, since this film is completely and totally empty. Stylish to a fault indeed, but much like a cardboard-cutout of a supermodel. As if that's not enough, it compounds this problem by making the worst mistake it could: playing the end of the film at the start. Why do filmmakers do this? Now we know from the start that the main protagonists are going to survive the whole film in order to get back to this point at the end. So you might as well nap through all the gunfights and explosions, because we know who's going to show up at the end. What a wasteful, stupid thing to do.

A film needs certain things to actually work as a film. It needs characters, who have back stories and emotions and ideas and hopes. It needs a plot, where the characters try to do things and are either successful or not. And it all needs to make a certain amount of sense. Oddly, Hitman decides to not do these things. Instead, it puts forward this idea where a secretive multi-national corporation recruits and trains orphans in order to build it's own army of assassins. It then presumably contracts these assassins out to the highest bidders anywhere in the world. And yet each of these assassins are all easily identifiable not only by the bar codes tattooed into the back of their skulls, but also in that they all sport shaven heads, the better to show off their tattoos I guess. It's like if James Bond wanted to go on a mission while wearing a '007' cap on his head.

These assassins, trained in all forms of combat, willing and able to kill anyone at any point for any reason, do not even have names, let alone lives. The main one in this film, played stonily by Timothy Olyphant, reacts to having a girl sit on his lap by rendering her unconscious with a nerve pinch. The plot seems to have something to do with the corporation trying to fix the Russian presidency by having the president killed and a lookalike planted in his place. And then killing the assassin to keep it secret. And throughout it all an Interpol detective chases after this shadowy killer. There's stuff about the Hitman maybe softening a little, thanks to a prostitute he identifies with stumbling into the story at some point, but it's all half-baked. Does the assassin care that the corporation that made him set him up? Do we? No on both counts, I think. Dehumanize the hero of a film and you get a movie where no one cares what happens to anyone. One and a half slutty dresses out of Five.



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