DuVernois Blog

Gitmo birthday

A video game in which one goes around killing non-xtians

Army recruiting tool? Nope, commcercial game from the folks who brought you left behind and the turner diaries.

Mugabe to continue as president

Among his achievements are the lowest life expectancy in the world, the highest inflation, and 50%+ unemployment. In a country that used to be the "bread-basket" of Africa.

Using the faith healer con to get a private airplane

And not some little Piper Cub, but a multimillion dollar corporate jet. Yup, Jesus don't want his tax collector to fly coach.

Bush's choice to head the Family-Planning Post?

Yup, you guesses it, someone who opposes contraception. At least for white people.

Buy your Nazi SS t-shirt at Wal Mart

The totenkopf.

Another day, another hypocritical fundie Republican

Head of the National Association of Evangelicals, a man who frequently rants about the evil of gays and drug addicts, wait for, yep, regularly pays for gay sex and methamphetamines. Oh well, it's not as if his followers would have learned anything from previous examples.

Afghan women have gained little or nothing since the ouster of the Taleban

"No real change" for Afghan women.

Where does the Iraqi resistance get their weapons from?

The US weapon handouts! Our government has handed out 1/2 million weapons in Iraq without any accounting, recording of serial numbers, or anything! Hmmm...maybe the goal was chaos and enhancing the Iranian regime after all?

So here's just about the weirdest thing I've seen recently

Dubya's new ranch of 98,000 acres in Paraguay. Okay, here is where it gets weird. Is that his little hiding spot to avoid prosecution for war crimes? Of does the 2.2 mile long runway (look on google earth) mean he's moving full-time into the cocaine exporting racket? Weirder still is the connection with the Moonies and their purchase of land in the same area. Okay, and then the Jenna connection? Too strange for words.

DoJ investigations of Congresspeople

Some mix of scary and gross.

Family values (identify the scandal competition)

Religious institutions in the US...

...have long had special rights. No property taxes, non-profit status even when they build theme-parks, salons, and bookstores. They aren't subject to OSHA, state child protection, EEO, or EPA guidelines. Recent iterations of the federal government have funnelled more money to the churches (under the banners of "stop abuse of xtians" and "faith-based initiatives) and given them additional right beyond those of individuals, non-profits (that are non-religious), and corporations.

The New York Times is running a series of articles on these issues. The first two have appeared already.

• Religious institutions being exempted from regulations. The focus here is on child safety and property rights.
• Employee rights discussed here.

Why shouldn't churches pay property taxes? They receive fire protection, police protection, and are connected to city water, gas, and sewers where applicable. Here in Minneapolis, they run apartment buildings, a nightclub, and bookstores and repay nothing to their community. A sorry state of affairs.

Addedon October 10th: The third part of the story, with a focus on property taxes and tax breaks for those with religious affiliations.

Understanding the response to Foley's actions

"The Catholic Church shields pedophiles in its midst because it fears that the reputation of the Church as a whole would be damaged if it were generally known that there are any significant number of pedophile priests, because it doesn't want to raise questions about the wisdom of demanding that clerics (pretend to) be celibate, and because it's easy to forgive people who agree with you on the issues you think most important in life.

For parallel reasons, the Republican Party shields pedophiles in its midst: it fears that the reputation of the Party as a whole would be damaged if it became generally known and understood that Republicans are no more "moral" than any other politicians, it doesn't want to appear to be hypocritical on specific sexual issues of intense importance to its Bible-literalist base, and it finds it easy to forgive people who agree with its positions on the issues that are most important to its other members and its voters.

The tendency to forgive people who say what we want to hear usually extends into a belief that, after they are forgiven, they will somehow be inspired to stop engaging in the embarrassing and proscribed conduct that we have forgiven them for. So it probably was with the GOP leadership and Foley. But most evangelicals seem to know better: I remember seeing bumper stickers a few years back that said something like "I sin every day, but Jesus forgives me!" Maybe Foley should have one of those bumper stickers on his car, so that when GOP hypocrites condemn his behavior, he can remind them that he sins every day, but that Jesus forgives him every day so that he can go out with a fresh slate to sin again tomorrow in the exact same way."

Taken from this conversation on Plastic.

Torture also worse after Saddam Hussein

Yup, the US helps bring democracy, prosperity, and the rule of law.

What does second-hand cigarette smoke and global warming have it common?

Some of the same folks bankrolling the "scientific" opposition to them. What a strange world!

Papal infallibility

Unbelievably, genuine news sources are talking about papal infallibility and what his apology means. It's like a discussion of the true powers of Godzilla, or Zeus.

How about "no more illegal wars" and "no torture?"

Brazil in the news

Okay, we can't say the rain forests are regrowing, nor that they aren't being destroyed, but they are being destroyed less quickly than before! Still 17,000 square kilometers per year. Good thing we don't need that forest to stop global warming. Oh, we do?

Rio, city of sex? Perhaps if this City of Sex is built on the Copacabana. Sex pods, artwork, swinger clubs, the Roman Catholic Church. Yup it's all in there.

Junk science in the courtroom

Polygraphs, dental forensics, sloppy labwork.

The continuing struggle of science & education against theocrats & ignorance

Lawrence Krauss has a decent, albeit brief editorial in the New York Times after the Kansas School Board skewed back towards reality. I'm not sure in what forum his disagreement over "scientifically inappropriate attempts by some scientists to discredit the religious faith of others" appeared. Will have to take a look. Though I can see tactically why scientists might feel that, I think that it is hypocritical to argue for a reasoned, scientific approach in all matters other than other people's theology. The logical holes are there along with the incoherence of major religions, their ahistoricality, and their pernicious nature in practice (and perhaps in theory). I see little benefit in doing this, but little harm either. Deeply-held beliefs, whether sensible or not, are not likely to be changed by simple logic.

Just the other day, we see an evolving piece of the religious attack on reason and science. Due to a "clerical" (hmmm...that has two meanings...) error, evolutionary biology has disappeared from a federal list of university majors approved for federal student grants. Yup, follow the link and you can still (8/25/06) see the missing line, a blank line, for 26.1303. What a coincidence.

Woman fired for being female

After 54 years, this woman was fired because she's a woman and therefore can't teach men. And the man who fired her? A city councilman as well as church minister. The Taliban appears to be staging a comeback.

What not to do with firefighters

Call them for a non-existent tree fire, ask them to get a cat out of the tree, and then shoot at them when they say no.

And in Las Vegas...

you need to have money in order to be invited to a picnic. Yup, feeding the homeless in a park is illegal.

Iranian justice

Hanging a sixteen year old girl for "immorality."

Bad things

• I just happened to find the website of the Lebanese Company for the Reconstruction of Beirut's Central District. Lovely site.
• Take a look at the bizarre occupations you can get "Kiss me I'm a..." (and MANY other) t-shirts for. I want a "KISS ME , I'M AN ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER COMMUNITY LIAISON OFFICER" shirt. It's too weird.
• Take a look for their "I only sleep with Kuwaiti women" ones as well.
• Abortion counseling centers give false information to patients. These are the ones that got federal funding, so they should provide accurate information. Instead they parroted the right wing canards of "psychological trauma, increased breast cancer risk, and infertility."
• Let's all remember the first rule of the lebanon.

Power saw assault on the subway

Yowza! Someone was watching too many Texas Power-tool Massacre films.

First wild bear in Germany since 1835

So it was shot.

EU complicit in the CIA prisoner torture network

BBC

Retuers

"Turning the corner"

Or not exactly. Iraq is in worse shape than ever:

• Record numbers of murdered coming into the morgue.
• In addition to revenge murders of civilians by US soldiers, we have random artillery fire killing civilians.
• Fifty people kidnapped all at once. The disappeared almost always turn up as dead bodies.
• As the third deadline for naming ministers passes, the militias continue to pull people out of cars and kill them.
• See what a day in Iraq is like three years after the war began. Freedom? Democracy?
• See what's up on the economic front. Electrical power is near pre-war, embargo, levels. A lot of money has been spent (or wasted) with little gain.
• More on Haditha, location of the most public massacre of Iraqi civilians. It's not My Mai (Song My), but shows the same US military failures. Massacres of civilians in futile jestures of revenge.

Who would have guessed? Part 2.

Our Congress-slugs are bribeable with free travel.

Gonzales on the 1st Ammendment

When "national security" is envoked, our chief law enforcement officer believes that the 1st Ammendment doesn't apply. A pretty shocking statement that journalists could be tried for publishing evidence of federal crimes.

Read about the NSA spying aided by AT&T on Wired magazine.

Bush challenges to the rule of law

Bush has claimed that he is above more than 750 laws. That they do not apply to him. ''There is no question that this administration has been involved in a very carefully thought-out, systematic process of expanding presidential power at the expense of the other branches of government," Cooper [Phillip Cooper, a Portland State University law professor who has studied the executive power claims Bush made during his first term] said. ''This is really big, very expansive, and very significant."

And more than 3500 Americans were illegally spied on last year by the FBI following the contention of Bush that domestic spying laws could be completely ignored. I really think his best chance in the long term is to resign and let Cheney give him a pardon. Unless Cheney is forced to resign first...

Darfur & Biafra

Been thinking about the big rally being held this Sunday, April 30th at the State Capital. "What did you do to try to stop the Darfur Genocide?" Been thinking about Biafra in light of what is happening now (and heck, for years now) in the Sudan. Got a book on the Biafran War a few days ago. Hadn't thought about it in quite some time. Anyway...there's not a lot of good material (at least that I could find quickly) on Biafra online, but you can try these to start:

• Wikipedia if you didn't remember where Biafra was.
• eXile web magazine's offbeat homage to Carl Gustaf von Rosen---hero of Biafra and general aviation saint of Africa.
• Frederick Forsyth got his start as a journalist in Biafra. His book remains the classic telling of the story.
• The Nation of Biafra, in exile.

Another take on Darfur, from two years ago.

Build your own Iraqi police/death squad

It's pretty cheap, and the cool mullahs are doing it. Guns, uniforms, bulletproofed cars. All available for cash transactions.

Standing room only airlines

As seat pitches decline again on many airlines, my 6' 6" body is bound to face more abuse from the airlines. But standing on flights?

Nails in the head

Who would have guessed that a suicide attempt using a dozen nails from a nail gun would be unsuccessful? We did know that it would make for a good medical article and some odd news online.

Life (as a sex slave) in the new Iraq

Even Time magazine can find the horror stories of post-"Mission Accomplished" Iraq.

Ignorance (of the law) is a valid excuse now?

A woman badly hurt her child shaking it in order to banish "evil spirits" from it.

$400 Million retirement package for Exxon executive

Well, at least those high oil and gas prices sent the money to someone who can truly use it. Both Lee Raymond and the Saudis thank you. Heck, the Iranian mullahs thank you also.

Own up to a drug conviction and no student aid for you!

I guess the department was right. It is an argument for drug legalization. 190,000 students have told the truth and been denied financial aid.

Lied to again by the felon-in-chief

Two days after the secret intelligence team reported to the White House that those nasty Iraqi trailers had nothing to do with bioweaponry, Dubya announced "We have found the weapons of mass destruction." It was not only incorrect, it was a bald-faced lie, known at that point to be incorrect. The lies that got the US into the war continued in (mostly failed) attempts at justifying the growing debacle.

DIY Lasik???

Yup, Lasik at Home. Sign me right up to sculpt my cornea from the comfort of my living room couch.

Scott McClellan

Scott McClellan fully and truly skewered in Vanity Fair. "Press Secretary Scott McClellan's mangled sentences, flat-footed evasions, and genial befuddlement have made him the butt of a thousand blogs, as well as of an increasingly savage press corps."

"Every day, he's pulped, pummeled, spit upon for speaking White House untruths—or for not speaking them well enough.

It is so bad, and so constantly public—every misspoken word, every stutter, every repetition, repeated mercilessly across the information universe—that he can only hope that it's gotten bad enough for him to get a sympathy vote."

Wow!

DeLay's excuse?

A vast anti-Christian conspiracy. Huh?

The Taliban college experience in Pensacola

An unaccredited college for the looniest of the loons. Get expelled for "making eye babies!" That is, looking at a member of the opposite sex.

Dubya presidential library may be built on land swindled from the elderly

How appropriate would that be?

On a typical day we'd condemn genocide, unless you want to advertise

Oi! It's a long, sad tale of how the New York Times printed an eight page advertising supplement which cites the virtues of the Sudan and the Sudanese government. The same government which works overtime to slaughter non-Muslems in the south of the country. Plastic lays out the story, and some of the comments clarify how advertising supplements are sold. It's weird that US Christian religious leaders are perpetually up in arms about the "oppression of Christians" in Wyoming, but not the genocide of Christians in the Sudan. Ooops! Wait a second, those Christians in Wyoming are white, right?

Further consequences of the Patriot Act

You need to report to the government if you take your chicken to the vet. Huh? This is smaller, less intrusive government? And it's weird!

Child "bride" in Afghanistan

One of the more painful stories that I have ever read. Married off at age four, beaten, starved, scalded, abused for years. Finally escaped.

Bush claims that Iraq is not in civil war

As the civil war claims 50-60 lives each day. In the US history analogy, this is worse than the (Bloody) Kansas salvary fight, but nowhere near as bad as our Civil War (3000 deaths per day on average) and only some fraction of the Revolutionary War (~100 per day) totals. Looking around the world, the Congo sees a shocking 2500 deaths per day. Still, this one is our fault and what to do in the Congo???

Note also buried in the story is news of another coverup of US military killings of civilians.

Outsourcing to North Korea?

Ick! South Korean firms are moving some manufacturing across the DMZ to employ North Korean workers who officially get 1/10th to 1/20th the salary of South Koreans, but the money goes to the North Korean government, not the workers. And the factory owners want to have the products labeled as made in South Korea.

Welcome to the brain of the Don

The Donald Rumsfeld that is. Plastic has an excellent resume of web links from his halcyon days in the Nixon and Ford administrations to leading two failed wars (see what sort of freedom and democracy has brought to Afghanistan?) for Dubya.

Read his own words, justifying what has been accomplished in the past three years in Iraq. Believe any of it? Like Rummy's $50 billion dollar and 5 week estimates of the war costs and length? And what's up with his comparisons of very and sundries with Hitler? Do we really fear that a 1000 year Venezualan Reich is right around the corner? Or is he projecting a bit?

Going back to the resume, we have to reflect on his successful running of the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon and his back-room efforts to help get the US out of the Vietnam War. For that he was shuffled off to be NATO ambassador. Then triumph as chief of staff and defense secretary under Ford, fighting against the whole nastiness of detante. Off to the private sector until Dubya decides to bring the Nixon crowd all back to the White House. The epic Shinseki-Rumsfeld fight seems now to be a footnote in the story, but certainly marked part of the White House team's decent into unreality.

Afghanistan. Iraq. Some investigations into what Rumsfeld has wrought.

The debt

Well, it now stands at about $27,000 for each person in the country. Or about 65.7% of the GDP. Over $8 trillion. What's going to happen when the Baby Boomers retire? It's rather a mess that those spend and borrow (not tax) Republicans have gotten us into financially.

Iraqi rights abuses increasing

According to the US State Department, which ignored abuses in Guantanamo, and of prisoners of the US authorities in Iraq and Afghanistan. The report does say that the United State's "own journey toward liberty and justice for all has been long and difficult, and it is far from complete." And getting farther.

And now with the US running the show, they even have a death penalty though it was intended mostly for a certain former president of theirs.

Wal-Mart bloggers

Wal-Mart press releases and other PR/propaganda are being distributed via blogs. So, blog for Wal-Mart. Hmmm...does it pay well? Hey, I could write positive comments about how Wal-Mart helps out state economies by forcing its workers onto public assistance. Or how it improves the trade deficit with China. Or how much electricity is consumed to make the cheap injection-molded plastic crap. Or how much CO2 is emitted in generating that electricity. Or...

Blogging for CENTCOM?

So, the US military hires people to look at blogs, add entries that try to lead people to official propaganda, and "engage" those that post information that does not agree with the propaganda line. Okay, Goebbels would have approved of those efforts, but they're just beginning efforts, aren't they? Eventually "incorrect" information could be replaced. That would just be a little hacking. And the "incorrect" information provider could be "removed." After all, they hate the freedoms that we used to have.

A $7 Billion "word processing error"

That, heh heh, happened to benefit the il companies to the tune of $7 Billion of taxpayer money. Nope, has to be just an accident.

Bill of Rights

Wow! 20% of surveyed Americans thought pet ownership was enshrined in the 1st Ammendment. Only one of the one thousand respondants could name all five liberties listed there. No wonder we're losing them.

• Freedom of/from religion
• Freedom of the press
• Freedom of speech
• Freedom of assembly
• Right to court process

Let's see...yup, all of them are under concerted attack.

Today's Iraq update

There are no, as in zero, nip, nada, Iraqi battalions are ready to do anything without US support.

Wait a seond! There is something they can do! They can act as death squads and kill up to 900 people per month (July figure). Bodies found with cigarette burns, and mutilated with power tools. These guys went to a cruder torture school than the US torturers. Maybe to the School of the Americas?

Want a different perspective? You can read the defense department's "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq" for lots of statistics. No comments in there about the near civil war situation, the death squads, or the growing power of the mullahs.

Remember the Freedom Tower? 1776 feet of pure freedom in lower Manhattan. Well, you may have to submit to iris scans and thumbprints. Additionally, the building seems to exempt from inspections. So, freedom means no privacy and being above the law?

And selling body parts?

Yuck!

Bikers drown out fundamentalist protesters at military funerals

So, these fundamentalist Christians from Westboro Baptist Church are going to the funerals of American victims of the Iraq War to harass the mourners. Why, you ask? Because the deaths are God's punishment on America for "tolerating" homosexuality. Huh? Okay, stay with me now, so bikers come out and run their engines and show their support for the victims and their families by drowning out the offensive Baptists. Got it? Yeah, it's weird. Read all about it in the Army Times this week.

In secret, previously declassified documents are being reclassified

It's a pretty bizarre back-attack on Bill Clinton's 1995 declassification order. That was supposed to speed the declassification of materials that had no need to remain secret.

Documents that have been reclassified range from bizarre to embarassing:

• "The CIA's assessment on 12 October 1950 that Chinese intervention in the Korean War was 'not probable in 1950' - two weeks before Chinese troops crossed into Korea."
• "A 1962 telegram from the then US ambassador to Yugoslavia containing an English translation of a Belgrade newspaper article on China's nuclear weapons program."
• "A 1948 memorandum on a CIA scheme to float balloons over countries behind the Iron Curtain to drop propaganda leaflets."

If you made a copy of them while they were public, you may now be in violation of the Espionage Act. Heck, pretty soon owning a copy of the Constitution is likely to be illegal, so a coverup of CIA misdeeds of 60 years ago may be the least of our troubles.

UN asks for Gitmo to be closed

Due to torture, inhuman operating conditions, and an abusive use of power. You can read the report here. And see the news articles here (Yahoo News).

The US regime refuses to consider this. And claims that the torture and abuse is, in fact, humane. And that the torture center houses "dangerous terrorists." Well, if so, they could be charged with crimes and their cases put before a judge and jury.

Looking further at who is actually in detention at Guantanamo Bay reveals an interesting story. Most of these people were Arabs arrested in Pakistan (for reward monies) and are not accused of hostilities toward the US. Though after four years of torture and confinement, it's hard to not imagine them wanting some payback now. Only eight of 132 studied are even accused of planning or being involved with potential terrorist attacks outside of Afghanistan. Many are just accused by one other person of having some association with the Taliban.

"If you think of the people down there, these are people, all of whom were captured on a battlefield. They're terrorists, trainers, bomb makers, recruiters, financiers, [Osama bin Laden's] bodyguards, would-be suicide bombers, probably the 20th 9/11 hijacker." -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld lying on June 27, 2005

Look at prisoner #032 for a case study. Someone who is not one of the "most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth" as Rummy put it, and is neither an enemy nor a combatant.

The "important" prisoners disappeared into CIA custody, and are not in Cuba. They've been ferried in and out of various torture centers in Eastern Europe and the Middle East instead.

And the government plans the biggest ever giveaway to the oil and gas industries

Remember, these are the folks with record profits, right? The companies that Americans and Iraqis are dying to support financially. Yup, give 'em another $7 billion. Besides, Bush was planning on making that up by cutting worthless social programs, right? What's more imortant to the stockholders of Exxon, I mean, the country, than increasing oil and gas company profits by another few billion? Nothing could be more important, right? I mean, what are you, a terrorist? Why do you hate this country?

Gitmo does torture

The UN has concluded that US activities at Guantanamo Bay do constitute torture and do violate international laws. Not that anyone is really surprised.

Would I make fun of Dick Cheney when he shot a lawyer?

Yes, I will!

It has become clear that Dick's five deferments from being sent to Vietnam ("I had other priorities") were well served. The additional "friendly fire" would have eventually eaten into US military moral.

A more sober, and more boring, take on the story is at the New York Times. We do learn that Dick used a 28 gauge shotgun, but we remain woefully ignorant of the shot size. 7.5 or 8? Or was he going for distant shots with #6 shot?

Another Chinese writer convicted and sentenced to prison based on Yahoo intelligence info

Just complying with the