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De muziek- en filmindustrie mag geen gebrekkige producten op de markt brengen, vindt de Consumentenbond. Mensen die legaal van muziek en film willen genieten, zouden tegen allerlei problemen aanlopen. De bond startte vrijdag een campagne over digitale auteursrechten.

De entertainmentbranche brengt volgens de bond – bijvoorbeeld om kopiëren tegen te gaan – producten en diensten op de markt die gebrekkig zijn en veroorzaakt daarmee dat mensen hun toevlucht zoeken tot illegaal aanbod. De organisatie eist dat de muziek- en filmindustrie de producten en diensten die niet voldoen aan de wet van de markt haalt en met een goed aanbod komt.

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Led by a bipartisan group of senators critical of White House policy on suspected terrorists, the Senate passed a bill Thursday that prohibits interrogators from exceeding 100 amps per testicle when questioning detainees. “Even in times of war, it counterproductive and wrong to employ certain inhumane interrogation techniques, and using three-digit amperage levels on the testicles of captives constitutes torture,” said Sen. John Warner (R-VA), who has also supported reducing the size of attack dogs and the height of nude pyramids. “Using amperages of 99 and lower, with approved surge protectors on the jumper-cable clamps, are the hallmarks of a civilized society.” The legislation did not address amperage restrictions on suspected terrorists’ labia.

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“When you get past the schoolyard mentality and the stupid, ignorant prejudices,�? you have heard people say, “what we have are two different operating systems that each work very, very well. Really, it’s not a matter of good or bad. It’s just a matter of personal preference.�?

Those are very wise words. I have said much the same thing. But what I’ve endured over the past few months is the equivalent of a weeklong road trip with someone whose company you’ve always enjoyed, but never really known as a true friend. Windows has propped its bare smelly feet up on my dashboard and told me the story about how he was so hung over during his aunt’s funeral that he threw up into the coffin a little. His greasy hair has left smears on the inside of the window that no solvent can shift. He just sort of assumed that he could use my iPod, and during the one time he took a turn at the wheel, the battery was completely flat and I had to listen the story about the funeral a second time.

So I’m not saying that my fond regards won’t return in time. But I’m going to have to spend a few weeks alone first.

[..]

As Mac users, we haven’t had enough exposure to wretched software design to develop any natural antibodies, and for this, we envy our brethren in the Windows community. We truly, truly do.

[..]

Thirty days after you unpacked a new PC, it starts. The DVD decoder starts asking you if you want to now purchase the optional super DVD decoder. The antivirus app tells you that your subscriptions are out of date and you need to provide a credit-card number. There was some kind of branded media player that you never launched even once, and it continues to throw popups in your face every five minutes despite your yelling at the screen every time it happens.

Yes, your user experience has now turned into Pledge Week at your local public television station…and you didn’t even get to see a Monty Python marathon first.

[..]
What shocks me back into reality? A sudden memory from a couple of weeks ago, when I came across the official personal website of Justin Guarini.

You know…the guy who came in second during the first season of “American Idol.�? The one who looks like Sideshow Bob from “The Simpsons,�? and who sings like a yard-sale painting of a teary-eyed clown on brown velvet.

Yeah, he built the site in iWeb.

If I’m a member of the same user community as that guy, then clearly, I shouldn’t go throwing stones.

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A Catholic priest in the US is under arrest and another is on the run after being accused of stealing millions of dollars from their parishioners.

Monsignor John Skehan, 79, was charged with grand theft, as Florida police searched for Father Francis Guinan.

The two men are suspected of stealing a total of $8.6m (£4.6m) from their Palm Beach church and funding a lavish life of property, holidays and gambling.

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A school recently suspended four eighth-grade girls because they wore identical outfits on the same day, some of the girls and their parents said.

Two of the girls, Dacia Small and Mindy Ellis, said McCulloch Middle School officials incorrectly branded them as gang members because of the outfits. The four received a five-day suspension after Principal Michael Shaffer saw their clothes, Small and Ellis said.

“One of the girls asked him what was the matter with it. Then he started yelling at all everybody and took us to the office and suspended us,” Small told Indianapolis TV station WRTV.

Shaffer said the girls were suspended because they violated school rules, but he declined to say which rules they broke.

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Who has controlled the Middle East over the course of history? Pretty much everyone. Egyptians, Turks, Jews, Romans, Arabs, Greeks, Persians, Europeans…the list goes on. Who will control the Middle East today? That is a much bigger question.

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In New Zealand, the Campaign Against Landmines (CALM) has decided to spread awareness through ketchup packets. The dotted line above is where you tear to open the packet, thus ripping off the child’s foot and letting the ketchup ooze out of the stump. Perhaps the one most poignant pieces of food marketing imagery yet.

On the weblog of an ambulance driver:

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The people of London are not getting the best clinical care because of copyright

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Starfleet surplus rummage sale!
Bargains, bargains, bargains! Own Captain Picard’s desk! Power your starship with dilithium crystals straight from Rura Penthe! Build your own Borg! Everything must go!

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A dramatic home video obtained by ABC News shows U.S. troops apparently abandoned a truck convoy after it came under insurgent attack in Iraq last year.

Three unarmed Halliburton truck drivers were executed at point-blank range once the troops left, according to a surviving driver, Preston Wheeler, of Mena, Ark., who taped the scene. “They was murdered. To me, they was murdered,” Wheeler told ABC News in an exclusive interview broadcast Wednesday on World News and Nightline.

[..]

Wheeler was hit by two AK-47 rounds and suffered serious damage to his right arm. Two months after the ambush, Halliburton notified him he was fired, citing a “work-related” injury.

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After the House voted 253-168 to set rules on tough interrogations and military tribunal proceedings, Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois, was even more critical than Boehner.

“Democrat Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and 159 of her Democrat colleagues voted today in favor of more rights for terrorists,” Hastert said in a statement.

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The now-declassified summary of the National Intelligence Estimate (PDF) on “Trends in Global Terrorism” focuses almost exclusively on Islamic extremists. But inserted at the very end is this one overlooked, though seemingly quite important, passage that identifies other terrorist threats:

“Anti-U.S. and anti-globalization sentiment is on the rise and fueling other radical ideologies. This could prompt some leftist, nationalist, or separatist groups to adopt terrorist methods to attack US interests. The radicalization process is occurring more quickly, more widely, and more anonymously in the Internet age, raising the likelihood of surprise attacks by unknown groups whose members and supporters may be difficult to pinpoint.” It continues: “We judge that groups of all stripes will increasingly use the Internet to communicate, propagandize, recruit, train and obtain logistical and financial support.”

Prior to 9/11, the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil was in Oklahoma City, where Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal building in pursuit of his right-wing, anti-federal-government agenda. But there is nothing in the NIE findings about right-wing or anti-government groups. Instead, there is a rather stark warning about the danger of “leftist” groups using the Internet to engage in terrorist attacks against the United States. Is there any basis at all for that warning?

There have been scattered reports over the last several years that the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism programs have targeted domestic political groups solely because such groups espouse views contrary to the administration’s. That this claim about “leftist” terrorist groups made it into the NIE summary is particularly significant in light of the torture and detention bill that is likely soon to be enacted into law. That bill defines “enemy combatant” very broadly (and the definition may be even broader by the time it is enacted) and could easily encompass domestic groups perceived by the administration to be supporting a “terrorist agenda.”

Similarly, the administration has claimed previously that it eavesdrops on the conversations of Americans only where there is reasonable grounds (as judged by the administration) to believe that one of the parties is affiliated with a terrorist group. Does that include “leftist” groups that use the Internet to organize? This NIE finding gives rise to this critical question: Are “leftist” groups one of the principal targets on the anti-terrorism agenda of the Bush administration, and if so, aren’t the implications rather disturbing?

And if you’re teaching English, you’re an enemy combatant as well:

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“Enemy combatant” doesn’t just mean people fighting with the Taliban or Al Qaeda. It also includes people accused of giving “material support” to hostilities against the United States. It’s unclear what the definition is in the current bill. In the past, the government’s definition of “material support” has been an open ended one. We at CCR have been challenging the federal criminal statute prohibiting “material support” to foreign groups on State and Treasury Department terrorism blacklists since 1998, and we’ve won three times before the district court and twice before the Court of Appeals on claims that the law is, in the court’s words, so vague that it “could be construed to [criminalize] unequivocally pure speech and advocacy protected by the First Amendment.” In court the government has repeatedly said that merely teaching English or international law, political advocacy, or how to petition the United Nations can constitute material support if the person on the receiving end happens to be affiliated with a blacklisted group. So saying only “enemy combatants” can be detained without court review is no limitation at all when anyone guilty of teaching English to someone affiliated with any of the thousands of blacklisted groups qualifies as one. (Lest you think I’m exaggerating, the law on “material support” is even worse in the asylum context, where claims have been rejected because villagers gave a glass of water to militia groups at gunpoint (see page 18 of the linked report for one example).)

“The issue isn’t whether we are the same as the Nazis. The issue is, we aren’t different enough”

–Israeli historian Avi Schlaim

But you know what? It isn’t about the Nazis this time. It’s about the Khymer Rouge.

[Quote:]

Below are photographs taken by Jonah Blank last month at Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The prison is now a museum that documents Khymer Rouge atrocities. Blank, an anthropologist and former Senior Editor of US News & World Report, is author of the books Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God and Mullahs on the Mainframe. He is a professorial lecturer at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and has taught at Harvard and Georgetown. He currently is a foreign policy adviser to the Democratic staff in the Senate, but the views expressed here are his own observations.

His photos show one of the actual waterboards used by the Khymer Rouge. Here’s the first:

Here’s another view:

How were they used? Here’s a painting by a former prisoner that shows the waterboard in action:

In an email to me, Blank explained the significance of the photos. He wrote:

The crux of the issue before Congress can be boiled down to a simple question: Is waterboarding torture? Anybody who considers this practice to be “torture lite” or merely a “tough technique” might want to take a trip to Phnom Penh. The Khymer Rouge were adept at torture, and there was nothing “lite” about their methods. Incidentally, the waterboard in these photo wasn’t merely one among many torture devices highlighted at the prison museum. It was one of only two devices singled out for highlighting (the other was another form of water-torture–a tank that could be filled with water or other liquids; I have photos of that too.) There was an outdoor device as well, one the Khymer Rouge didn’t have to construct: chin-up bars. (The prison where the museum is located had been a school before the Khymer Rouge took over). These bars were used for “stress positions”– another practice employed under current US guidelines. At the Khymer Rouge prison, there is a tank of water next to the bars. It was used to revive prisoners for more torture when they passed out after being placed in stress positions.

The similarity between practices used by the Khymer Rouge and those currently being debated by Congress isn’t a coincidence. As has been amply documented (“The New Yorker” had an excellent piece, and there have been others), many of the “enhanced techniques” came to the CIA and military interrogators via the SERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape] schools, where US military personnel are trained to resist torture if they are captured by the enemy. The specific types of abuse they’re taught to withstand are those that were used by our Cold War adversaries. Why is this relevant to the current debate? Because the torture techniques of North Korea, North Vietnam, the Soviet Union and its proxies–the states where US military personnel might have faced torture–were NOT designed to elicit truthful information. These techniques were designed to elicit CONFESSIONS. That’s what the Khymer Rouge et al were after with their waterboarding, not truthful information.

Bottom line: Not only do waterboarding and the other types of torture currently being debated put us in company with the most vile regimes of the past half-century; they’re also designed specifically to generate a (usually false) confession, not to obtain genuinely actionable intel. This isn’t a matter of sacrificing moral values to keep us safe; it’s sacrificing moral values for no purpose whatsoever.

These photos are important because most of us have never seen an actual, real-life waterboard. The press typically describes it in the most anodyne ways: a device meant to “simulate drowning” or to “make the prisoner believe he might drown.” But the Khymer Rouge were no jokesters, and they didn’t tailor their abuse to the dictates of the Geneva Convention. They– like so many brutal regimes–made waterboarding one of their primary tools for a simple reason: it is one of the most viciously effective forms of torture ever devised.

But in another way, it is about Nazi Germany:

Germany, 1933

“Even some of those who became Nazis at this time did not fully realize what they were doing. They might think that they stood for nationalism and socialism, were against the Jews and for the pre-1914-18 status quo, and many of them secretly looked forward to a new public adventure, a repeat of 1923. Still, they expected all that to take the humane forms usual in a civilized nation. Most of them would have been deeply shocked if one had suggested that what they really stood for were torture chambers and officially decreed pogroms (to name but two of the most obvious things, and these are certainly not yet the final horrific culmination). Even today there are Nazis who are shocked and alarmed if this is pointed out to them.”

Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler
New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2002