Ranting and Roaring

Bruce Ralston challenges:

Okay, here’s a challenge to anyone still reading this space: name one time where history was changed by a truthful confession derived from torture. Doesn’t have to be a ticking bomb scenario or anything, just a time where without a torture-induced confession the winning side of history would have lost. There must have been one, in all of human history, right? Then why can’t I think of one? Any valid examples will be reprinted here.

Although it does not involve a confession (that I know of), the fact that the D-Day invasion army was mercilessly tortured by their commanding officers for several days before the landings certainly contributed to victory.

More hilarity, via New Sisyphus. U.N. Official Faults U.S. Detentions; Terrorism Fight Hurts Torture Ban, Human Rights Chief Says:

Louise Arbour, the high commissioner for human rights at the United Nations, presented the most forceful criticism to date of U.S. detention policies by a senior U.N. official, asserting that holding suspects incommunicado in itself amounts to torture.

You know that there’s not much to complain about when they’re down to that. That and calling red ink menstrual blood. I will admit that the naked human pyramid and the electrodes connected to nothing are torture, but just barely.

Apropos of nothing, if all you can think of “US Prisoner Abuse” when you hear or see the phrase “Abu Gharib”, your moral compass is pointing south-east and needs some adjustment.

Fjordman translates from the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende:

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights understands the concern in Muslim countries over the 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad and expects UN experts on racism to deal with the matter. At the same time as Islamic countries in a meeting in Mecca are going to discuss joint action against Denmark, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour has involved herself in the discussion.

The leader of the UN’s work on human rights is saying in plain words that she is concerned over the drawings that Jyllands-Posten printed in September, expressing “apologies” for statements and actions demonstrating a lack of respect for the religion of other people.

Thank god Arbour decided to quit her job on the Canadian Supreme Court to persue her first love of going after Jews and Americans, sorry, I mean “working for human rights and social justice”. Perhaps there’s room at the UN for recently self-crowned Empress of Canada McLachlin too?

Doc Searls writes:

Today, Roosevelt said, was “a day that will live in infamy”. Veterans who remember are filling the WWII Memorial at a rate of greater than 1000 per day. Most of us who were born in the late 1940s and grew up in the 1950s, didn’t know our parents were The Greatest Generation. We just wished they’d quit harping about growing up in the Depression. Those two subjects, The War and The Depression, gave our parents enormous moral authority, as well as a boundless supply of instructive stories at the dinner table. (“When I was your age, we walked ten miles to school in the snow…”) We didn’t appreciate it much at the time. Now that so many of the old folks are going or gone, we do.

The generation that followed has some great stories too, like about that time they tried to drive to the anti-war rally but the VW van broke down but then they met some groovy chicks who had some really great grass but gave them gonorrea. Somehow, I doubt we’ll ever be appreciating those stories.

Captain’s Quarters:

On the other hand, we could also explore what others might do to justify Harry’s death. Suppose, for example, that Rowling let Howard Dean write the last volume. We could then get treated to Voldemort as a misunderstood victim, or perhaps a bad guy but no worse than the arrogant and arbitrary Albus Dumbledore, who tried to control the wizarding world just as surely as Tom Riddle. Why, Dumbledore taught Voldemort almost everything he knew! And the Ministry of Magic spent years denying Voldemort’s danger, so obviously they are to blame for all that has happened, not the evil wizard (as if there is any such thing as evil). Harry, therefore, is little more than a fool that chose the wrong horse and got himself killed for it. Good thing, too, because if he survived, he would get blamed for all the deaths that occurred just because he found it necessary to oppose Voldemort.

John Gushue quotes to the SF Weekly complaining about Craigslist taking “their” revenue:

Bay Area papers alone forfeit at least $50 million annually to Craigslist, losses that contribute to layoffs of dozens of reporters.

The David P. Janes media empire loses tens of billions of dollars of years because we are not granted an exclusive right to print, radio and tv media in North America. And with that kind of money, we might even hire tens of dozens of reporters.

No one has an entitlement to a business model. Perhaps the reason for layoff of dozens of reporters is that subsidies from other profit centers let newsrooms slide their standards for reporters. With regards to SF area papers, this would mean stocking the place grim left-leaning hacks who tend to sacrifice facts for narrative, privilege for competency, and politics for fairness.

Ah, thanks for the poem, Kathy:

‘Twas the night before Kwanzaa
And all through the ‘hood,
Maulana Karenga was up to no good.

He’d tortured a woman and spent time in jail.
He needed a new scam that just wouldn’t fail.
(“So what if I stuck some chick’s toe in a vice?
Nobody said revolution was nice!”)

The Sixties were over. Now what would he do?
Why, he went back to school—so that’s “Dr.” to you!
He once ordered shootouts at UCLA
Now he teaches Black Studies just miles away.

Then to top it all off, the good Doctor’s new plan
Was to get rid of Christmas and piss off The Man.

Karenga invented a fake holiday.
He called the thing Kwanza. “Hey, what’s that you say?

“You don’t get what’s ‘black’ about Maoist baloney?
You say that my festival’s totally phony?

“Who cares if corn isn’t an African crop?
Who cares if our ‘harvest’s’ a month or two off?
Who cares if Swahili’s not our mother tongue?
A lie for The Cause never hurt anyone!

“Umoja! Ujima! Kujichagulia, too!
Collectivist crap never sounded so cool!
Those guilty white liberals—easy to fool.
Your kids will now celebrate Kwanzaa in school!”

And we heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight:
“Happy Kwanzaa to all, except if you’re white!”