Well, the theory that all of the abuses at Abu Ghraib were caused by the evil Americans has been shot to little tiny bits. The United Nations is having it’s own scandal along the same lines. But in this case, it’s been going on for years instead of weeks, it’s been covered up by the superiors of those involved instead of passed to higher authorities for investigation and prosecution, and this involved hundreds or even thousands of cases of rape or coerced prostitution instead of simply embarassing and abusing the victims.
This does NOT make the abuses at Abu Ghraib right, but it shows that there are bad people everywhere, and they must be confronted and stopped. That happened in the case of the abuses in Abu Ghraib, but will it happen in an increasingly corrupt and ineffective United Nations? Will we see those responsible for these new incidents stand trial? Or will the United Nations be able to cover it up and prevent its being broadcast like the braying coverage of the abuses at Abu Ghraib?
What will be interesting to watch for in the coming weeks and months will be to see if the pictures come out because of the news media’s salacious appetite for shocking stories and pictures, or if it will be relegated to obscurity because showing the pictures would be “too graphic.” It would also be interesting to know how much the political leanings of many individuals in the media influence their decision on that particular issue, and to compare it to the coverage of the pictures of Abu Ghraib.
Archive for December, 2004
Abu Ghraib
Thursday, December 23rd, 2004I seem to have arrived.
Thursday, December 23rd, 2004Well, it’s finally happened. I’m getting spam about my blog. I got an email today inviting me to join a yahoo groups group. My ranking on The Truth Laid Bear is rocketing past being 18,000th! Unfortunately, it’s rocketing downward, much like many of the space program’s early rockets.
Not that I’m complaining. There are actually a few people out there that read the random crap I spew out once a day or so. As my crap spewing has been rather light of late, here’s some for today.
French teenagers have decided that taking your aggression out on murderous dictators is BAD, so it must be better to mug a much-beloved seasonal figure if he doesn’t give you enough candy. However, you could also be an American and simply shoot at the man with a pellet gun. At least we don’t use the real ones on unarmed civilians, so at the moment I believe we still have bragging rights.
Then again, we have to chain down the Son of God to keep him from being stolen. All over the country.
So we’re not up by much.
Academic Bias
Tuesday, December 21st, 2004Another article on academic bias here. It has a lot more analysis (and generally thoughtful analyis as well) than most other articles on the topic generally devote to it. I’m not sure I agree fully with the “academic freedom claims by conservatives are squelching real discussion,” as the academic freedom claims are generally made in response to what students feel to be the squelching of their perspective IN real discussion. I suppose all of this is really a matter of perspective, so read the article yourself and make your own analysis. Unless you don’t want to, in which case, don’t.
Slow news day.
Monday, December 20th, 2004Since nothing that particularly interested me happened today, I’ll just post a quote from Mayo this evening.
(We were playing Halo 2, and Dan was shooting at Kris in the Banshee)
Mayo: “But… I hate Banshees!”
Barner: “You hate mythological Irish creatures?”
Mayo: “Yes! I HATE the Amish!”
E-bay is the devil.
Saturday, December 18th, 2004Just letting those of you out there who haven’t ever dealt with E-bay before, they’re the devil. It’s nice to be able to sell stuff online, yes, but it’s so complicated to set the stupid auctions up and wade through the infinite options available (many of which cost you money) that it drives me up the wall.
However, I will finally be rid of that RAM and the processor that I couldn’t use, so that will begin to help cleaning up the vast mess in my room.
My opinion on E-bay may change if I manage to make money on it.
UN confronts terrorists?
Friday, December 17th, 2004Nope. They just let them walk right past. Not much they really could have done though. Even if they did have guns, they’d probably have to ask France for permission to use them.
Link through little green footballs.
Hitler as monster?
Thursday, December 16th, 2004This worries me. Not because somebody was dumb enough to hold an art show like this near the site of Dachau, but because people are terrified by the possibility that somebody would portray Hitler as somehow a human being, instead of an inhuman monster. I understand the sentiment expressed later in the article (“These portrayals can be misinterpreted. The perpetrator can appear the victim”), but it’s still worrying on a number of levels, the very least of which is that somebody thinks people are stupid enough to believe Hitler was a nice guy ’cause somebody drew pictures of him.
Hitler was a human being, regardless of what he did. The desire to rob him of his humanity makes it considerably more comfortable to be human — hey, if he was a monster instead of a regular guy like you and me, we don’t have to think about the evil that we do, right? While his actions may have been inexcusable, we must not allow ourselves to forget that we too are capable of great evil. Just because you haven’t ordered the extermination of millions of human beings doesn’t mean that you are incapable of doing bad things. How many of us have ever been in a position for our evil thoughts to have as much impact as Hitler’s did? And all of this is ignoring the fact that originally Hitler was elected. It was not just his thoughts, but their acceptance by the majority of the voting public at the time that allowed the evils of Hitler’s Germany to come about. Doesn’t this indicate that there is something more to all of this than a monster seizing power and murdering people?
Reading this article and thinking over my reaction to it made me think of something by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn that was used as an introductory quote to the book The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History by Howard Bloom:
“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deed and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
Cahill’s Misunderestimation
Thursday, December 16th, 2004Mary Beth Cahill has admitted that she underestimated the impact of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads.
Imagine.
MPAA crackdown
Wednesday, December 15th, 2004The MPAA is cracking down on downloaders. They’re starting to need to hit servers now — peer to peer filesharing is dispersing, and really these services are some of the more vulnerable. This is like trying to stop a firehose by plugging it with a cork.
infoAnarchy has more about them, including the informative tidbit that more than one-third of ALL internet traffic is BitTorrent traffic. Much as the MPAA and the RIAA would like you to believe, not ALL of this is illegal.
This kind of thing could be a turning-point for the music and movies industries. Availability of their wares online at reasonable prices with decent speed with downloading would solve many of their problems, but except for a few half-hearted attempts here and there, it’s not happening. Instead of changing with the times (like the MPAA had to do with the release of the VCR), the associations are trying to choke the new medium. Much like they tried to do with the VCR. They should see how far THAT got them (I mean, come on. I have a VCR and I don’t even own a TV) and ‘adopt, adapt, and improve.’ Relying on outmoded business practices and trying to maintain those practices’ viability by suing their customers is simply an insane policy. It’s more lucrative to try to sell new movies for $25 a pop on DVD, but it’s not fair to the customers.
The most amusing part of the article, for me, is this quote…
“These people are parasites leeching off the creativity of others.”
Sounds remarkably like the MPAA and the RIAA, n’est-ce pas?
Universal library?
Tuesday, December 14th, 2004Google as public library? Sounds like an excellent project. For those of you unfamiliar with it, I recommend taking a look at Project Gutenberg. I’m trying to figure out the best way to download these, categorize them (into fiction and nonfiction) and set up a search system so that I could search for a term or phrase through thousands of documents. I’ve got some already, but I’m having trouble keeping up with how many new books they keep adding.