Not particularly new ground for anyone who's been paying attention, but extremely well stated and thorough.

Silver star.

Voting with their hearts | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

"How dare you treat an American officer with disrespect?" he shouted back, indignantly. "Believe me, we have treated you with much more respect than other people. You should go to places like Iran, you'd see a big difference." The irony is that it is only "countries like Iran" (for example, Cuba, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe) that have a visa requirement for journalists. It is unheard of in open societies, and, in spite of now being enforced in the US, is still so obscure that most journalists are not familiar with it. Thirteen foreign journalists were detained and deported from the US last year, 12 of them from LAX.

Jesus... this country. We are well and truly lost.

Welcome to America | www.guardian.co.uk

Hello everyone! Personal message to all the New Yorkers out there: Did you read Michael Ignatieff's essay in the the NY Times Magazine? If so, contact me ASAP to let me know you're OK. I put your flyer up at Grand Central Station, but have heard no response.

A grand demolition of dipshit "logic" from Ignatieff. David Rees kicks ass.

David Rees: Cormac Ignatieff's

ooking ahead to the next round of FISA debates, Democrats and civil liberties advocates need to rethink their public relations strategy. In fact, this recommendation applies beyond FISA to the larger civil liberties debate. It’s not enough to say that "Administration Policy X" threatens civil rights, the public needs to understand in a very concrete way why those rights matter. My non-empirically informed sense is that much of the public just doesn’t feel in their gut that these protections benefit them.

The reason, though, that these rights do matter -- the reason we care about them -- is quite simple. The rights protect people from abuse of power. Accordingly, the FISA amendment is a bad idea because the executive branch will inevitably abuse these new sweepingly-broad surveillance powers. It’s a lesson as old as written history -- unchecked authority is eventually used for improper reasons. Indeed, it’s the theoretical rationale of our entire constitutional structure.

To be sure, not every abuse of authority is as extreme as, say, actions in Nazi Germany. And people throw around unhelpful terms sometimes. But the unlikely probability of the most extreme abuses shouldn’t distract from the very real -- and inevitable -- abuse that will come if this law stays on the books. To understand what I mean, just look at the origins of FISA.

Obsidian Wings: Why FISA Matters

Thai police officers who break rules will be forced to wear hot pink armbands featuring "Hello Kitty," the Japanese icon of cute, as a mark of shame, a senior officer said Monday.

Police officers caught littering, parking in a prohibited area, or arriving late — among other misdemeanors — will be forced to stay in the division office and wear the armband all day, said Police Col. Pongpat Chayaphan.

...

"Simple warnings no longer work. This new twist is expected to make them feel guilt and shame and prevent them from repeating the offense, no matter how minor ... (Hello) Kitty is a cute icon for young girls. It's not something macho police officers want covering their biceps," Pongpat said.

Totally fucking awesome.

Bad Thai cops to endure Kitty shame - Yahoo! News

Mohammed’s interrogation was part of a secret C.I.A. program, initiated after September 11th, in which terrorist suspects such as Mohammed were detained in “black sites”—secret prisons outside the United States—and subjected to unusually harsh treatment. The program was effectively suspended last fall, when President Bush announced that he was emptying the C.I.A.’s prisons and transferring the detainees to military custody in Guantánamo. This move followed a Supreme Court ruling, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which found that all detainees—including those held by the C.I.A.—had to be treated in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions. These treaties, adopted in 1949, bar cruel treatment, degradation, and torture. In late July, the White House issued an executive order promising that the C.I.A. would adjust its methods in order to meet the Geneva standards. At the same time, Bush’s order pointedly did not disavow the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” that would likely be found illegal if used by officials inside the United States. The executive order means that the agency can once again hold foreign terror suspects indefinitely, and without charges, in black sites, without notifying their families or local authorities, or offering access to legal counsel.

This is a comprehensive and fascinating article on the torture scandal.

A Reporter at Large: The Black Sites: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

Totally awesome... thanks boingboing!

Video A gentlemen's duel - short, film - Dailymotion Share Your Videos

This is already awesome, but even more, i want this with a 12 hour cycle.

whitney music box var. 0 - chromatic - 48 tines

Of course. I’d be happy to discuss the students’ groupings with you. Let’s start with the fellows in the camouflage. They’re very interested in military science fiction. It’s all guns and dropships and the like with them. The student who’s holding forth very loudly is John Ringo, and that’s David Weber next to him. The quieter fellow holding the Bob Heinlein mask is John Scalzi.

Read the whole thing... it's a good list, actually...

-k

Speculative Fiction Authors Considered As High School Students « Live Granades

When American humanitarian Marla Ruzicka was killed in Baghdad last year I wrote about her, as did many others, and she was known. When an American or European journalist is killed, the system works and they are known as well. Similarly, when a Soldier or Marine is killed, they merit ink and public eulogy once their names are released. But in this war the news comes in every day, displaying a sameness which confuses. It is “59 Iraqis killed by bomb” today, and on another day, “fourteen bodies discovered in Baghdad.” See here or here for example. Sadly, unless they are high government officials, at most all that is known of these victims is their town and, sometimes, their profession. They are anonymous, and with their anonymity, easier to deal with. Few accounts let you know an average Iraqi.

I cannot change this. I have no magic wand to wave and change the rules of the game of journalism and the market so that the corporations which constitute the news industry forgo some of their (generally double-digit) profit in favor of tripling their coverage in bad places around the world. I cannot remove Adam Smith’s damned-near-visible hand from this process. But I can tell you about one Iraqi, just one, and leave it to you to extrapolate.

Mother and Motherf***er -- What Happens to America's Iraqi Friends when we leave