May 2009 archive

The Dog is off at a week of training so the intent was not to post this week. However there are times when the need to speak out clearly against something as heinous as torture overrides the best of intentions.

This is going to be short and to the point. This week we are seeing Lynn Cheney and other torture apologists trotting out the most extreme of ticking time bomb scenarios. So, at the risk of being very short (a rarity for the Dog) here is the meat of this dairy:

If I had Khalid Sheik Mohammed in custody, and there was reason to believe that he knew of a plot that would surely kill the Dog’s family, his Mom, Step Dad, Sisters, Wife, Nephews and Niece, the Dog would NOT order him tortured.  This is true even if there were any evidence that torture would work. This is true even if the Dog were to be included in the list of people who would surely die.

Everyone loves their family, everyone loves their lives and would like to have it continue, but it is not an unreasoning desire. There are, in fact things which are more important them my family, or even my life. One of them is the idea that our nation has a set of ideals we will hold to, even in the face of extreme danger. This is an ideal which inspires the Dog to public service, even though it is a job the public rarely thanks you for. If you will not live up to your ideals in the face of extreme adversity, then they are not ideals, they are merely luxuries you will abandon whenever it becomes to hard.

This is what the Torture Apologists are saying. They do not care to have any character, they have no resolve, and they will abandon any pretense of ethics or morality out of fear, and do it instantly.

Now, the Dog does not expect everyone to feel the same way he does. Even on a Liberal blog like this there will be those who would value their family over the ideals of their nation. This is understandable, how lucky for all of us that this scenario which the Torture Apologists trot out is in no way close to reality. There is no way to know if the person you hold would have the information which would prevent the attack they describe. There is no way to if the information you tortured out of them would be accurate or would send your resources in the wrong directions. There is, in fact, no way to know accurately enough that there would be an attack to make this pretense of justifying torture. It is a silly fallacy which is thrown up to try to put those of us who will not sanction torture in a box.

The thing is, for the Dog, there is no box.

The floor is yours.  

Let me start by saying I love Cat Steven’s music. He was/is one of the spiritual lights of my life. He once sat right in front of me at Harvard Performing Arts center to watch our local lady, Bonnie, do the opening set before his show. I was in awe.

One of the primary spiritual threads that informs my being is Sufi Islam. I highly recommend looking into it if you haven’t read any yet. Idries Shah is an excellent source of many books. Caravan of Dreams is my favorite. Sufi Islam is a love supreme by another culture.

Here’s Wiki on Yusuf:

Yusuf Islam (born Steven Demetre Georgiou, 21 July 1948),[1] best known by his former stage name Cat Stevens, is a British musician of Greek Cypriot and Swedish ancestry. He is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, educator, philanthropist and prominent convert to Islam.

As Cat Stevens, he has sold over 60 million albums around the world since the late 1960s. His albums Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat were both certified as Triple Platinum by the RIAA in the United States; his album Catch Bull at Four sold half a million copies in the first two weeks of release alone, and was Billboard’s number-one LP for three consecutive weeks. He has also earned two ASCAP songwriting awards in consecutive years, for “The First Cut Is the Deepest”, which has been a hit single for four different artists.

Stevens converted to Islam at the height of his fame in December, 1977,[2] and adopted his Muslim name, Yusuf Islam, the following year. In 1979 he auctioned all his guitars away for charity[3] and left his music career to devote himself to educational and philanthropic causes in the Muslim community. He has been given several awards for his work in promoting peace in the world, including 2003’s World Award, the 2004 Man for Peace Award and the 2007 Mediterranean Prize for Peace. In 2006, he returned to pop music, with his first album of new pop songs in 28 years, entitled An Other Cup. He now goes by the single name Yusuf

Awesome human being.

My problem with Yusuf:

Salman Rushdie controversy

Main article: Cat Stevens’ comments about Salman Rushdie

The singer attracted controversy in 1989, during an address to students at London’s Kingston University, where he was asked about the fatwa calling for the death of author Salman Rushdie. Newspapers quickly interpreted his response as support for the fatwa, but he released a statement the following day which said that he had not been supporting vigilantism, and was merely explaining the legal Islamic punishment for blasphemy. In a BBC interview, he displayed a newspaper clipping from that time period, which quotes from his statement. Subsequent comments made by him in 1989 on a British television program were also seen as being in support of the fatwa, but in an extensive statement in the FAQ section of his web site, [46] he states that he was joking and that the show was improperly edited. In the years since these comments, he has strongly denied ever calling for the death of Rushdie or supporting the fatwa. [3][40]

Apparently, I only caught the first two to three days of the news cycle on that one. My impression was that he agreed with the “legal Islamic punishment for blasphemy” – death. I tuned him out immediately on hearing that news update. It saddened me greatly that someone whose work I had admired so much had embraced hard-lined dogma.

I’m glad to discover that I’ve been wrongly seeing the man in that light.

This week I thought it might be fun to caption a few animals.  Some are mine; some are for you to play with.

moar funny pictures

Pony Party is an open thread.  Please do not rec the party.  And please, leave your own lols, photos, video clips, or whatever in the comments.

I think we are seeing a movement here.  In the last couple days, I’ve written about the Hartmarx sit-in votes in Illinois and the pressure on Wells Fargo to choose a bidder for Hartmarx that will keep the compnay open.  The Illinois plant voted for a sit-in.  Now Rochester has followed.

ROCHESTER, NY, MAY 13-Determined to protect good, U.S. manufacturing jobs, more than 450 Hickey-Freeman workers unanimously voted yesterday to stage a sit-in if Wells Fargo & Co., their employer’s main creditor and a recipient of a $25 billion taxpayer bailout, liquidates company assets. Rochester workers are joining with employees of Hartmarx, Hickey-Freeman’s parent company, who voted earlier in the week to stage a sit-in if their plants were shuttered.

Rochester Hickey-Freeman Workers Vote to Stage Sit-In if Bailed-Out Bank Attempts to Close Company

More, after the fold.

Also on Dkos: http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

1. The Sydney Morning Herald reports the U.S. hands over control of new drones to Pakistan. According to American officials, the “U.S. military has begun a program of armed Predator drone missions against militants in Pakistan that for the first time gives Pakistani officers significant control over routes, targets and decisions to fire weapons”.

   “Under the new partnership, a separate fleet of US drones operated by the Defence Department will be free for the first time to venture beyond the Afghan border under the direction of Pakistani military officials, who are working alongside American counterparts at a command centre in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.”

   The Washington Post reports Pakistani commandos target Taliban bases. Pakistan army officials claimed “they were making a concerted effort to wipe out the hideouts and supply bases of Islamist guerrilla forces, mostly located in unpopulated hilly areas, but had not begun a ‘hard-core urban fight’ to dislodge the fighters from major towns in the region.”

   DAWN Media adds Fighter jets pound Taliban strongholds across Swat while “hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled the punishing offensive”. People trapped in Mingora are terrified. They said the Talibann has “planted mines and were digging trenches.” One said, “Please, please, please, do not call me again, they will cut my throat and say that I was spying”. Elsewhere, the Daily Times reports the Taliban has destroyed two boys’ primary schools in Ali Masjid area of Jamrud tehsil in Khyber Agency.

   Meanwhile, AFP reports Taliban attacks NATO terminal in Pakistan. The attack by dozens of Taliban fighters destroyed eight vehicles in the northwest city of Peshawar. “Around 40-50 armed militants attacked the depot before dawn. They lobbed several petrol bombs and fled,” police officer Mohammad Ehsanullah said.

   The NY Times reports Pakistan says 1.3 million flee fight with Taliban. “The exodus, if it proves to be as large as the government says, would be one of the largest migrations of civilians in the region since the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, when as many as 14 million people left their homes for one of the newly independent countries. The Pakistani government and relief agencies have set up a string of camps and food distribution centers in the area, but not nearly enough to accommodate all the people who need them.”

   Meanwhile, The Guardian notes a Banned jihadi group is running aid programme for Swat refugees. “The Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation (FIF) offers food, medical care and transport to villagers fleeing into Mardan district, where authorities are struggling to cope with an influx of more than 500,000 people. But the charity, according to experts, officials and some of its own members, is the renamed relief wing of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a group the Pakistani government banned last December after the UN declared it a terrorist organisation.”

Four at Four continues with car free suburbia, stress test sham, and spying for China.