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Chocolate Covered SQL
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Washington ’snubbed Iran offer’
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Iran offered the US a package of concessions in 2003, but it was rejected, a senior former US official has told the BBC’s Newsnight programme.
Tehran proposed ending support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups and helping to stabilise Iraq following the US-led invasion.
Offers, including making its nuclear programme more transparent, were conditional on the US ending hostility.
But Vice-President Dick Cheney’s office rejected the plan, the official said.
Of course. That would have been disastrous for Haliburton.
Secret Court to Govern Wiretapping Plan
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The Justice Department, easing a Bush administration policy, said Wednesday it has decided to give an independent body authority to monitor the government’s controversial domestic spying program.
In a letter to the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said this authority has been given to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and that it already has approved one request for monitoring the communications of a person believed to be linked to al-Qaida or an associated terror group.
The court orders approving collection of international communications - whether it originates in the United States or abroad - was issued Jan. 10, according to the two-page letter to Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa.
“As a result of these orders, any electronic surveillance that was occurring as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program will now be conducted subject to the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court(*),” Gonzales wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press.
And how about all the other programs, by the FBI, CIA, NSA? And how about that new secret program you’re launching to replace the Terrorist Surveillance Program now that it is hindered by oversight?
And when are you going to arrest the criminals that were doing the illegal wiretaps?
* offer not valid in Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin or Wyoming.
Music industry declares war on Internet providers
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The global music industry Wednesday threatened to take legal action against Internet Service Providers if they failed to take action against users who illegally upload and download music.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industries issued the warning as a report it published noted global digital music sales failed to compensate for the overall decline in sales of CDs in 2006.
In a press conference Wednesday, IFPI Chairman John Kennedy called on Internet providers to play a greater role in preventing file-sharing, if necessary by disconnecting people who upload or download unauthorized files.
Although illegal file-sharing has been curbed, falling to 14% of digital music downloads from 18% in 2002, it is still damaging growth of the legitimate digital music industry, the IFPI said.
“If the ISPs would step up and play their part in preventing piracy, we would be able to eradicate it,” he said, adding that to date the Internet providers had “filibustered” repeated requests for cooperation from the music industry.
Kennedy said that if ISPs refused to cooperate, the music industry would take legal action in 2007, but he declined to provide details about whom the industry would target.
Internet Service Providers Wednesday responded robustly, arguing that it wasn’t their responsibility to monitor information distributed over their networks.
The Internet Service Providers’ Association said under European law ISPs were “conduits of information” and pointed out that data-protection legislation prohibited them from monitoring information over their networks.
So because consumers failed to buy the same number of CD’s as last year, ISPs will get sued? And because other people are doing the same thing I’ve done years ago - stop buying CD’s - soon I will be unable to use my network connection in any way I please?
Waterboarding black inmates in NY state prison in 1858
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The furor over waterboarding is _so_ 2006, but I just found a digital clip from an Dec. 18, 1858 Harper’s Weekly(?) article on the use of water torture in New York state prisons more than 150 years ago.
The story centers on a prisoner killed by torture, and is illustrated with a drawing titled “The Negro Convict, More, Showered To Death.” Despite a datedly racist sentence (”Like most negros, he entertained a lively fear of cold.”), it’s a disturbing read.
But what’s most interesting is how it echos so many news stories from last year. Just before the article jumps to a second page — the New York Public Library only has the first page of the story — we find that prison officials, unbeknownst to the public, had been using water torture “as a means of coercing criminals into submission” for more than a decade. And that officials apparently started using water after other torture techniques — i.e. whipping — led to prisoner deaths and public outcry.
Link to New York Public Library Digital Image ID: 814245.
Full text:
We need no longer, it seems, travel to China or Japan for illustrations of torture. A visit to our own penitentiaries and prisons will furnish all the horrors that the curious appetite can desire.
A year ago we published an account of the poor-houses of this State. Our account was derived from the Report of a Legislative Committee. It showed, in brief, that, as a general rule, paupers and other inmates of the State benevolent institutions were not adequately protected against the cold; that the sexes herded together promiscuously at night; and that, in many instance, poor wretched idiots, half-starved and ill-clad, had actually frozen to death in their cells in State institutions.
We now present a far more fearful picture of the mismanagement of our public institutions for the confinement and correction of criminals. On 21 inst. a convict named More, imprisoned in the State Prison at Auburn, was showered to death by the prison officials. The circumstances of the case are simply as follows:
The convict, More, was a negro. He is certified to have been a man of naturally pleasant temper, but violent when crossed. On 1st inst. he was said to have been in a bad humor; he was seen, or is said to have been seen, to sharpen a knife, and mutter threats against someone; on the strength of which he was, on 24 inst., seized by several keepers or deputy-keepers of the State Prison, and by them dragged toward the shower-bath for punishment. It seems he stood in dire dread of the the shower-baths. Like most negros, he entertained a lively fear of cold. He knew that the water of the shower bath would be very cold indeed; and after vainly appealing to the feelings of his captors to release him, he broke away from and and fled — be it remarked — to the shop where he was in the habit of working. At the door of the shop a convict arrested him; a keeper and his assistants swiftly followed; he was dragged by main force, and after many violent struggles, to the shower-bath; all the water that was in the tank — amounting to from three to five barrels, the quantity is uncertain — was showered upon him in spite of his piteous cries; a few minutes after his release from the bath he fell prostrate, was carried to his cell, and died in five minutes.”
It is this homicide that we this week illustrate.
The use of the shower-bath as a means of coercing criminals into submission to the orders of prison authorities began to be general about the year 1845. In that year a convict at the Auburn State Prison was whipped by order of competent authority, and died under the lash. The public indignation which was aroused by the even led to the abolishment of whipping as a punishment in the prisons of State of New York. It was preserved in other States. [Illegible] instance, in Connecticut, in [illegible] State Prison wardens are authorized to this to administer [illegible]…
What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy
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The human mind isn’t very well equipped to make sense of a figure like $1.2 trillion. We don’t deal with a trillion of anything in our daily lives, and so when we come across such a big number, it is hard to distinguish it from any other big number. Millions, billions, a trillion — they all start to sound the same.
The way to come to grips with $1.2 trillion is to forget about the number itself and think instead about what you could buy with the money. When you do that, a trillion stops sounding anything like millions or billions.
For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.
Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.
The final big chunk of the money could go to national security. The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that have not been put in place — better baggage and cargo screening, stronger measures against nuclear proliferation — could be enacted. Financing for the war in Afghanistan could be increased to beat back the Taliban’s recent gains, and a peacekeeping force could put a stop to the genocide in Darfur.
All that would be one way to spend $1.2 trillion. Here would be another:
The war in Iraq.
You better start to buy their trash.
Be an obedient consumer now, and go shopping.
There’s a good boy…
*Sigh* Greed is a great motivating force….