Someone posted a comment to my blog that not torturing people puts our military at greater risk.
Wrong.
It does NOT put them at greater risk. They are at greater risk BECAUSE we torture. Whatever we do to another country, how can we condemn them if they do the same to OUR military? John McCain has said torture doesn't work. He should fucking know. Robert Baer said it doesn't work. CIA for 25 years, I think he's a better source of information that most of the idiots out there. The bottom line is that we need to improve intelligence at the outset instead of waiting to capture some one to find out what's going on (and, by torturing them, we are getting incorrect information, read the fucking studies).
Until congress forces the different agencies to work better together, and until our intell community returns to HUMINT instead of relying on technology to gather information, things won't get better. But, you can see how stupid we are about these things. We put people at the airport to screen for terrorists instead of spending that money trying to find them BEFORE they buy a plane ticket.
Back in I think it was 1995 Clinton signed a bill that said the intell community could no longer recruit people who had a criminal record. That has to be one of the STUPIDEST decisions ever made. Who do YOU want as a source of information? A little old lady who's never done anything, or a woman who has worked with criminals and knows what they are doing? The problem was confounded by agency directors who put more money into technology than boots on the ground. Would it have been easy to find out about the 911 plot? No, but could it have been done? YES. There are MANY books out there about the intell failure that led to 911, and they are based on what's been declassified. I'm sure there's even more stuff out there pointing to the intell communities' failure.
And here's another thing to think about...torture assumes the person captured is guilty without any due process to determine guilt. That is TOTALLY against the way america is supposed to work. How would YOU feel if a member of your family was captured by the Saudi government, for standing on a street corner in let's say Istanbul, on vacation. The Saudis' took that member of your family and you had no idea where they were. Your family member was gone for 5 years. The whole time the government was torturing him or her.
Would you be like "oh, that's okay, they were doing it for protection"?
And if you have a loved one in Iraq, how do you feel about the fact that they would be treated equally to how we've treated prisoners? Would you be okay with that, water boarding, beating to the point of organ failure, sensory deprivation? Or would you at that point want to invoke the geneva convention?
If we don't believe that every human being is equal, we have lost our humanity. The fact that someone is an insurgent in Iraq does not make them any less of a human being than we are. If we can't treat them with respect that should be accorded to anyone with a soul, we should not call ourselves religious, or believers in god.
We should call ourselves inhuman because that's how we are behaving. And the fact that we have imprisoned innocent people, and tortured them, is going to have blowback. If you don't believe that you know nothing about history or the middle east.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
a word on torture
Yesterday when I was running an errand, I caught talk of the nation on NPR. Neil Conan was interviewing Robert Baer and Ted Koppel about torture, and whether it should be legal. If you care at all about this issue, I recommend a listen: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104021713
I was horrified to hear most of the idiots who called into the show that said it was okay to torture people. Robert Baer, who worked for the CIA, said he has never, ever in his career encountered a situation where torture was necessary. He cited examples of countries that torture (us, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, yeah, we're in great company) and said that they consistently have bad intell, where as countries that don't torture (he cited Jordan as an example) get good intell.
Ted brought up the whole "bus is going to blow up, you have to get the location of the bomb immediately" situation, and Robert Baer said those types of situations rarely, rarely if ever happen, and should not be grounds for having a law that says torture is legal.
I won't go too much into a tirade on this, but I read a quote that I thought was very profound about torture. It's in this week's issue of the new yorker, in an article by Philip Gourevitch, where he says:
"Former Vice President Dick Cheney has said that we must torture because it is effective*. That is at best, a false argument: a crime is not absolved because it works. (After all, terrorism can be effective.)"
I also would like to point out to any conservatives reading this that the problem stems from the intell community. If they did a better job doing their jobs, we wouldn't need to torture people. 9/11 didn't happen because we failed to torture people. 9/11 happened because the disparate intell agencies weren't sharing and acting on intell. Why wait until a crime is about to be committed to have to hurry up and torture someone? Why not be fucking on top of the problem BEFORE it becomes a problem?
Bush set up the DNI but that has just created another level of bureaucracy and its only purpose was to give bush intell analyzed to support whatever bush was doing. And nothing has changed in the intell community since 9/11. There are still information stove pipes, people who won't work together, and idiots who would rather go home on time than do their fucking jobs. Because, I guess they figure we can torture people and find out by being a bully what they were too stupid to figure out using their brains.
Anyway, it's something that has been weighing on my mind. This concludes the tirade on torture.
*and the idea that torture is effective has been mis-proven so many times in so many studies I assume the only reason that assumption still exists is because the idiots on Fox news are reporting their usual incorrect information
I was horrified to hear most of the idiots who called into the show that said it was okay to torture people. Robert Baer, who worked for the CIA, said he has never, ever in his career encountered a situation where torture was necessary. He cited examples of countries that torture (us, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, yeah, we're in great company) and said that they consistently have bad intell, where as countries that don't torture (he cited Jordan as an example) get good intell.
Ted brought up the whole "bus is going to blow up, you have to get the location of the bomb immediately" situation, and Robert Baer said those types of situations rarely, rarely if ever happen, and should not be grounds for having a law that says torture is legal.
I won't go too much into a tirade on this, but I read a quote that I thought was very profound about torture. It's in this week's issue of the new yorker, in an article by Philip Gourevitch, where he says:
"Former Vice President Dick Cheney has said that we must torture because it is effective*. That is at best, a false argument: a crime is not absolved because it works. (After all, terrorism can be effective.)"
I also would like to point out to any conservatives reading this that the problem stems from the intell community. If they did a better job doing their jobs, we wouldn't need to torture people. 9/11 didn't happen because we failed to torture people. 9/11 happened because the disparate intell agencies weren't sharing and acting on intell. Why wait until a crime is about to be committed to have to hurry up and torture someone? Why not be fucking on top of the problem BEFORE it becomes a problem?
Bush set up the DNI but that has just created another level of bureaucracy and its only purpose was to give bush intell analyzed to support whatever bush was doing. And nothing has changed in the intell community since 9/11. There are still information stove pipes, people who won't work together, and idiots who would rather go home on time than do their fucking jobs. Because, I guess they figure we can torture people and find out by being a bully what they were too stupid to figure out using their brains.
Anyway, it's something that has been weighing on my mind. This concludes the tirade on torture.
*and the idea that torture is effective has been mis-proven so many times in so many studies I assume the only reason that assumption still exists is because the idiots on Fox news are reporting their usual incorrect information
eldo practice epic
Dr. Jay and I went climbing at Eldo yesterday afternoon after my million billion conference calls, which started at 5 am, were over.
We decided to climb something on the wall that's across from the Bastille. I forget what the name of our route was. It was supposed to be a fun little multi-pitch climb.
We got to the bolts at the top of the first pitch, and then decided to do the second pitch even though Jay had never climbed it before. We got to the top of the second pitch and realized there were no bolts or slings to rap from. So we free climbed what might have been the third pitch of the climb because it seemed like roping up at that point was just a waste of time. The pitch was only about 50 feet.
At the top of that, we still couldn't find any bolts or slings. Also, there was no way to walk off. By this time, I was in some serious pain. I have been walking around in flip flops so I have blisters all over my feet. Not so much fun to walk around in tight climbing shoes. Plus, I was getting worried. Twice before I've ended up in the same situation at Eldo (with two different climbers) and remembered both situations ending with a long walk in climbing shoes from where we rapped down to where we had left our packs. My feet were muttering "I am SO not happy about this AT ALL" and I was like "quit your bitching or I'll send you back to China".
The sun luckily was not going down as fast as I was worried it would. I was convinced that Jay, who's been climbing in Eldo for years, would figure something out. That something involved downclimbing a very steep and scary rock section to this tree. Jay was standing on the base of the tree, with about a 200 foot fall right in front of him. I started to get nervous and asked him to sling the tree and clip in. Then I down climbed the section. I could tell Jay was nervous that I was going to fall. I had images of me falling, landing on Jay, and the two of us ripping the tree out by its roots and all of us tumbling down the cliff. That made me laugh and I felt less nervous.
Jay slung the rope around the tree and rapped down first, with the assumption that he would find a ledge or bolts and we would be able to get down. Luckily less than 100 feet down there was indeed a ledge that we could use to walk off the cliff. I was hugely relieved. I rapped down and then started to pull the rope. The bastard got almost all of the way down when it decided to lodge itself in a little hook on the rock. I was like fucking great. I hung off the rope with all my body weight and it didn't move. Jay tried to yank it too, but it was lodged tight.
Jay started moving around to different areas on the ledge to see if he could dislodge it. The rope wouldn't budge. I did have one moment where my heart almost stopped because Jay was leaning backwards off the ledge, with about 100 feet of air at least between his current position and the deck, and suddenly the rope twinged. If the rope had dislodged Jay would have gone flying off the cliff. I was like please do NOT do that again! Jay just laughed.
Dr. Jay ended up climbing up this kind of scary looking route to get the rope down. I kept telling him that I would rather leave the rope and buy a new one than risk something bad happening, but Jay seemed to be enjoying the danger. I gave up and let him do what he wanted, which was to get the rope down. Luckily he didn't have to climb up too far to get it and was able to rap down off of yet another strategically placed tree. I was very relieved when he finally got back to the ledge. As he was pulling the rope again we were joking about it getting caught again. But, it didn't.
I hobbled, and Jay walked, back to our packs, and I finally took off my climbing shoes. I had a blister the size of a quarter on the bottom middle of my left foot that was completely filled with fluid. It had so much fluid in it that when I finally drained it (for the record, Dr. Jay told me to drain it) all this water shot out and made a wet spot on my carpet. It was kind of gross, but at the same time fun. Also, a chunk of one of my toenails that has been loose for a while got caught on a seam in my climbing shoe and broke off. I'm so bummed because I was going to paint pink them this weekend, and there isn't enough toenail left on that toe to paint.
When we got back to Dr. Jay's car we were talking about how climbing is a great engineering problem, and how it's kind of fun to have practice epics so you can do some problem solving when your life isn't on the line and you are just inconvenienced. I also think we did a good job of solving problems as a team. I was like "Jay, can you fix that" and he fixed it.
On the drive home I asked Dr. Jay if he was going to get mad if I wrote a blog about the climb. He laughed and said he wouldn't, but then said he was going to write corrections if I exaggerated anything. So I did my best to not exaggerate. I probably got some stuff wrong anyway. Stand by for Dr. Jay's corrections...
We decided to climb something on the wall that's across from the Bastille. I forget what the name of our route was. It was supposed to be a fun little multi-pitch climb.
We got to the bolts at the top of the first pitch, and then decided to do the second pitch even though Jay had never climbed it before. We got to the top of the second pitch and realized there were no bolts or slings to rap from. So we free climbed what might have been the third pitch of the climb because it seemed like roping up at that point was just a waste of time. The pitch was only about 50 feet.
At the top of that, we still couldn't find any bolts or slings. Also, there was no way to walk off. By this time, I was in some serious pain. I have been walking around in flip flops so I have blisters all over my feet. Not so much fun to walk around in tight climbing shoes. Plus, I was getting worried. Twice before I've ended up in the same situation at Eldo (with two different climbers) and remembered both situations ending with a long walk in climbing shoes from where we rapped down to where we had left our packs. My feet were muttering "I am SO not happy about this AT ALL" and I was like "quit your bitching or I'll send you back to China".
The sun luckily was not going down as fast as I was worried it would. I was convinced that Jay, who's been climbing in Eldo for years, would figure something out. That something involved downclimbing a very steep and scary rock section to this tree. Jay was standing on the base of the tree, with about a 200 foot fall right in front of him. I started to get nervous and asked him to sling the tree and clip in. Then I down climbed the section. I could tell Jay was nervous that I was going to fall. I had images of me falling, landing on Jay, and the two of us ripping the tree out by its roots and all of us tumbling down the cliff. That made me laugh and I felt less nervous.
Jay slung the rope around the tree and rapped down first, with the assumption that he would find a ledge or bolts and we would be able to get down. Luckily less than 100 feet down there was indeed a ledge that we could use to walk off the cliff. I was hugely relieved. I rapped down and then started to pull the rope. The bastard got almost all of the way down when it decided to lodge itself in a little hook on the rock. I was like fucking great. I hung off the rope with all my body weight and it didn't move. Jay tried to yank it too, but it was lodged tight.
Jay started moving around to different areas on the ledge to see if he could dislodge it. The rope wouldn't budge. I did have one moment where my heart almost stopped because Jay was leaning backwards off the ledge, with about 100 feet of air at least between his current position and the deck, and suddenly the rope twinged. If the rope had dislodged Jay would have gone flying off the cliff. I was like please do NOT do that again! Jay just laughed.
Dr. Jay ended up climbing up this kind of scary looking route to get the rope down. I kept telling him that I would rather leave the rope and buy a new one than risk something bad happening, but Jay seemed to be enjoying the danger. I gave up and let him do what he wanted, which was to get the rope down. Luckily he didn't have to climb up too far to get it and was able to rap down off of yet another strategically placed tree. I was very relieved when he finally got back to the ledge. As he was pulling the rope again we were joking about it getting caught again. But, it didn't.
I hobbled, and Jay walked, back to our packs, and I finally took off my climbing shoes. I had a blister the size of a quarter on the bottom middle of my left foot that was completely filled with fluid. It had so much fluid in it that when I finally drained it (for the record, Dr. Jay told me to drain it) all this water shot out and made a wet spot on my carpet. It was kind of gross, but at the same time fun. Also, a chunk of one of my toenails that has been loose for a while got caught on a seam in my climbing shoe and broke off. I'm so bummed because I was going to paint pink them this weekend, and there isn't enough toenail left on that toe to paint.
When we got back to Dr. Jay's car we were talking about how climbing is a great engineering problem, and how it's kind of fun to have practice epics so you can do some problem solving when your life isn't on the line and you are just inconvenienced. I also think we did a good job of solving problems as a team. I was like "Jay, can you fix that" and he fixed it.
On the drive home I asked Dr. Jay if he was going to get mad if I wrote a blog about the climb. He laughed and said he wouldn't, but then said he was going to write corrections if I exaggerated anything. So I did my best to not exaggerate. I probably got some stuff wrong anyway. Stand by for Dr. Jay's corrections...
Monday, May 11, 2009
the bad building
Last night I had a dream that I was supposed to be presenting at a meeting, and I was in this huge building that looked like a Vegas casino. I was trying to find the elevators to get to my meeting but I couldn't. Then some guy said "you have to push the blue circle" and I saw this blue circle on the wall and pushed it. The wall broke apart into two curved pieces and there was this metal box thing that was the elevator.
I asked the guy how to get to the floor I needed and he said "the elevator only goes to one place". So I took it, got off when it stopped, and ended up wandering around in this maze of conference rooms. None of them were the room I was supposed to go to.
I ended up getting into and getting out of about 10 different elevators trying to find the room I needed. Every time the elevator would go down it felt like free fall, and one time I was riding the elevator down there was a 10 year old kid in there with me and he started crying because he thought he was going to die when the elevator crashed. I kept explaining to him that elevators are safe but he wouldn't listen to me.
Finally I decided to call my client to get exact directions on where the meeting was supposed to be. But my blackberry wasn't working in the building. I tried to find a door to get outside but I couldn't. Then I came to a bar and a bunch of people I used to know in Maryland were sitting there drinking. I asked if they knew where I was supposed to go and they gave me directions. I started to follow their directions, which were taking me deeper and deeper into the building, and I realized I was trapped in the building and would never get out.
Then I woke up.
I asked the guy how to get to the floor I needed and he said "the elevator only goes to one place". So I took it, got off when it stopped, and ended up wandering around in this maze of conference rooms. None of them were the room I was supposed to go to.
I ended up getting into and getting out of about 10 different elevators trying to find the room I needed. Every time the elevator would go down it felt like free fall, and one time I was riding the elevator down there was a 10 year old kid in there with me and he started crying because he thought he was going to die when the elevator crashed. I kept explaining to him that elevators are safe but he wouldn't listen to me.
Finally I decided to call my client to get exact directions on where the meeting was supposed to be. But my blackberry wasn't working in the building. I tried to find a door to get outside but I couldn't. Then I came to a bar and a bunch of people I used to know in Maryland were sitting there drinking. I asked if they knew where I was supposed to go and they gave me directions. I started to follow their directions, which were taking me deeper and deeper into the building, and I realized I was trapped in the building and would never get out.
Then I woke up.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
my empire of dirt
Saturday I spent two hours of my life I'll never get back pulling weeds in my back yard. I actually didn't know some of the things were weeds until my guests came over for sushi night.
After I pulled up all the weeds my yard was looking like shit. I ended up going to bed at 9 pm last night because I was so tired from the week's engagement, and got up at 4 this morning and couldn't go back to sleep. I realized around 7 am that home depot would be open so I went and bought 40 plants for my yard. I know, what was I thinking?
So I've spent the day burying them and trying to get the rest of the yard in order. I bought something called dragon's blood, because it sounded cool. And some little green spiky things because they look like robots. I bought two plants that had pink flowers on them, and some more lavender because I planted that last year and it didn't die.
What a fucking pain in the ass when I got home though. I was digging for like a million years. Then I kept forgetting that I had planted stuff in a certain place and accidentally stepped on some of my new plants. Also, I was afraid while I was digging that I was going to dig up a snake, because they hide underground, so I had to put these huge shears on my lap, opened, so that if a snake came out of the ground I'd be able to chop it in half. Then I remembered this story someone told me about how a snake's head can bite you even if it's dead. So I had to take my little cushion thing that I had been kneeling on and make a barrier in front of me in case, when I chopped the snake in half, the head came flying towards me. Now my knees hurt. Fucking snakes, I hate them for almost biting me and making my knees hurt.
There were little direction things that came with all my plants, but some of them I couldn't read because I got mud on them, and others I read but found to be ridiculous. Like one said to plant the plants at least 8 inches from each other. But the plants themselves were only an inch big. That seemed really gay, so I planted them closer together. I think if they're so far away from each other they'll die because they think no one cares, but if they're close to each other they'll all grow up to be great because they're trying to outdo the other plants to be the best looking plant. Then I had more plants than I had holes, and didn't feel like digging more holes, so the final 4 plants I put into one big hole in a little pattern.
Finally, because my yard was a total muddy shit show, I decided to put down some grass seed I found in my garage. Even though I hate grass, I hate mud worse (except digging it, and mushing it around, that was the only fun part today). I pulled out all these little pellets that smelled like dog food and put them all over my yard. After wasting 20 minutes doing that I happened to glance at the bag and realized it wasn't fucking grass seed, but grass seed accelerator. What the fuck is that? It's like my grass is going to be split and then someone can build a bomb out of it? I was annoyed, even more so because now my yard smells like dog food.
I'm hopeful things might go good for my new plants because I have grown some plants in the past. My best plant is a christmas tree named Michael. When I got him he was only up to my knee and now, two years later, the little bastard is almost as tall as me. If he keeps being good and not dying this year I'm going to get him some beads for decoration.
I know I'm supposed to water stuff after I bury it, but it looks like it's going to rain, so I'm holding off. I figured whatever deity controls the weather has got to do a better job of watering than I could.
After I pulled up all the weeds my yard was looking like shit. I ended up going to bed at 9 pm last night because I was so tired from the week's engagement, and got up at 4 this morning and couldn't go back to sleep. I realized around 7 am that home depot would be open so I went and bought 40 plants for my yard. I know, what was I thinking?
So I've spent the day burying them and trying to get the rest of the yard in order. I bought something called dragon's blood, because it sounded cool. And some little green spiky things because they look like robots. I bought two plants that had pink flowers on them, and some more lavender because I planted that last year and it didn't die.
What a fucking pain in the ass when I got home though. I was digging for like a million years. Then I kept forgetting that I had planted stuff in a certain place and accidentally stepped on some of my new plants. Also, I was afraid while I was digging that I was going to dig up a snake, because they hide underground, so I had to put these huge shears on my lap, opened, so that if a snake came out of the ground I'd be able to chop it in half. Then I remembered this story someone told me about how a snake's head can bite you even if it's dead. So I had to take my little cushion thing that I had been kneeling on and make a barrier in front of me in case, when I chopped the snake in half, the head came flying towards me. Now my knees hurt. Fucking snakes, I hate them for almost biting me and making my knees hurt.
There were little direction things that came with all my plants, but some of them I couldn't read because I got mud on them, and others I read but found to be ridiculous. Like one said to plant the plants at least 8 inches from each other. But the plants themselves were only an inch big. That seemed really gay, so I planted them closer together. I think if they're so far away from each other they'll die because they think no one cares, but if they're close to each other they'll all grow up to be great because they're trying to outdo the other plants to be the best looking plant. Then I had more plants than I had holes, and didn't feel like digging more holes, so the final 4 plants I put into one big hole in a little pattern.
Finally, because my yard was a total muddy shit show, I decided to put down some grass seed I found in my garage. Even though I hate grass, I hate mud worse (except digging it, and mushing it around, that was the only fun part today). I pulled out all these little pellets that smelled like dog food and put them all over my yard. After wasting 20 minutes doing that I happened to glance at the bag and realized it wasn't fucking grass seed, but grass seed accelerator. What the fuck is that? It's like my grass is going to be split and then someone can build a bomb out of it? I was annoyed, even more so because now my yard smells like dog food.
I'm hopeful things might go good for my new plants because I have grown some plants in the past. My best plant is a christmas tree named Michael. When I got him he was only up to my knee and now, two years later, the little bastard is almost as tall as me. If he keeps being good and not dying this year I'm going to get him some beads for decoration.
I know I'm supposed to water stuff after I bury it, but it looks like it's going to rain, so I'm holding off. I figured whatever deity controls the weather has got to do a better job of watering than I could.
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