Year: 2006
Like A Piece of Luggage
Posted on November 28, 2006 in Terrorism
I don’t think it jives as a national security interest when a man sues the CIA because he has been mistaken for a terrorist and then taken off to a remote location to be tortured. I hope the appeals court gives Khaled el-Masri a chance to recover some of the life he lost when operatives jumped him in Macedonia in 2003:
Benjamin Wizner, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, told a three-judge appeals panel on Tuesday that the government’s position was absurd because what happened to Mr. Masri had hardly remained secret. He noted that the German government was openly investigating whether its officials had played a role in Mr. Masri’s ordeal, and numerous news accounts have quoted unidentified American officials as confirming what happened.
Mr. Wizner said the government had not plausibly explained how national security interests might be harmed by a trial. He said President Bush acknowledged the C.I.A.’s program, known as extraordinary rendition, this summer, and it is widely known that other governments have been involved. A trial would not disclose state secrets but would merely involve “confirmation of a fact the entire world already knows,” he said….
Mr. Masri, who was born in Kuwait, was arrested in Macedonia on Dec. 31, 2003, and flown to a prison in Afghanistan, where he was held for five months. During his incarceration, he has said, he was shackled, beaten and injected with drugs.
On Tuesday, he said through an interpreter that he was kept in deplorable conditions “not fit for a human being at all.” Upon arrival in Afghanistan, he said, he was told that he was in a place where he had no right to recourse for what happened to him….
Mr. Masri was released in May 2004 on the orders of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, after she learned he had been mistakenly identified as a terrorism suspect. He was freed in Albania, where he was left to make his way home to Germany, which he likened to being treated “like a piece of luggage.”
Mr. Masri, who had earlier been denied permission to come to the United States to attend the hearing, said he has not been able to find a job since his return to Germany. “Both my Arab and German friends keep their distance,” he said.
To add insult to injury, Mr. Masri has not been allowed to enter the US to attend the hearings even though he is not a terrorist.
Not Out of the Mainstream
Posted on November 28, 2006 in Blogging
I have to say that a recent survey indicating that a full 83% of bloggers are over 30 years of age heartens me. I’m not an odd man out after all, but representative of a trend.
Seven Wonders
Posted on November 27, 2006 in Whimsies
Elkit set me on to a site which is attempting to identify the new Seven Wonders of the World. From the final 21, I made the following choices:
- Chitzen Itza (would have preferred the pyramids at Tenohuachitlan)
- the Easter Island Statues
- the Great Wall
- the Statue of Liberty
- the Taj Mahal
- Timbuktu
- the Pyramids at Giza
What did you choose?
The Buddha’s Brain
Posted on November 27, 2006 in Genetics Personality Disorders Psychotropics Reading Thinking
What mysteries await us in the Buddha’s brain?
Cactus Watering 2
Posted on November 27, 2006 in Weather
Could it be a butterfly effect? Or sympathetic magic? Or just my body’s ability to sense the coming of the storm? Last night it rained and the soil in each of the cactus pots is saturated.
Cactus Watering
Posted on November 26, 2006 in The Phone Weather
I’ve been letting my cacti and jade plant go unwatered all summer long.
Quiet Among the Bipolars
Posted on November 26, 2006 in Bipolar Disorder
I’ve checked and rechecked my feeds: most of my online bipolar friends have not been writing for days if not weeks.
You Must Fight
Posted on November 24, 2006 in Responsibility
One price of contention is that it is hard to conduct a fearless and searching self-examination. Perhaps that is part of the aim of those who attack.
At the beginning of the Bhaghavad Gita — that section of the epic Mahabharata which has been turned into a holy book — the rebel leader Arjuna finds himself looking over the ranks of soldiers arrayed on the field of battle and feeling sick because of the carnage which is about to occur. He expresses this to the Blessed Lord, Krishna, who says “You must fight.” What follows is a long exposition on the order of things, especially the caste system.
Lately, I’ve been told by others that I do not fight for myself enough. Which means that I don’t hang around when someone is lambasting me and slandering me. When I find myself making angry exchanges, I attempt first to redirect the conversation to the purpose. And if that purpose proves to be boiling me in wordy oil, I leave. I do not have to listen to libel and I do not have to submit to torture.
I, like Arjuna, might have felt the same pain. I have found myself on the field of battle, pressed forward by a sense of obligation to press on. And it did not make me feel well to do so. There are times, it is true, that you must fight, but not for every slight or every misstep on the part of others. My recent score on this has been mixed: I have to say that I have fought when I should not have fought but, also, I have walked away when a disagreement proved too calamitous for my health.
I do not think, like some do, that growth results from not thinking about your mistakes. Sometimes we need to be hard on ourselves. I’ve seen many people remain stuck in a happy land where they are free to keep making the same mistakes, retain the same insensitivities as before, online as well as off. I don’t want to be like that.
The question one might ask is if Arjuna had been accompanied by the Buddha or Jesus or Hillel, would his companion have told him to fight? It is doubtful. We as a civilization claim to be built on the words of Christ and of Hillel, yet there’s still a barroom mentality: a drunk attacks you and you must, some say, bring out the switchblade.
Resist, I say. Stand on the facts. Be honest in your dealings but do not fight. This is not an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. This is being free to believe and to investigate, to stand by your thoughts and profit from your discoveries. No blood need be shed, no reputations ruined for this. Die Gedanken sind frei.
Friday Anteater Blogging – A Grammar Lesson
Posted on November 24, 2006 in Xenartha
This came from an article in The Oregonian:
Ernest Miller shared some childhood flashbacks about the word the.
“When I was in elementary school we were taught proper use of the word the. By that I mean that whenever the word the was followed by a word beginning with a vowel it was to be pronounced thee (instead of thu).
“If I was talking about something, such as an animal, the first letter of the name of the animal determined how the word the would be pronounced.
“For example, if the name of the animal was anteater the correct usage would be, ‘I saw thee anteater in the (thu) tree, not the (thu) anteater in the (thu) tree.’
“This rule only applies to the pronunciation of the word the, and not the spelling of the word.
“All the so-called educated people, such as newscasters . . . always mispronounce the word the as it relates to the first letter of the word following.”
Who needs cat or squid blogging when anteaters combine the best qualities of both?
On The Origin of Small Hopes
Posted on November 23, 2006 in Sorrow & Regret
I just wish that people would follow my example when they speak to me about recent matters.
Thanksgiving Wish for All
Posted on November 23, 2006 in Festivals
May the only turkey at your Thanksgiving feast be the one on the table.
