"It was not that she was not in the island. She was very much in the island, lounging at the Hilton Hotel, which was allegedly paid for by the Tourism Authority. But word filtered back that she ‘did not feel’ like coming out to the club, but just felt like ‘chilling in her room’.

Excuse you? So … you feel that this was just an all-expenses paid trip to Barbados just for the heck of it? Cos we like you that kinda way?

Um, no dahlin. You were paid to appear. And you damn lucky you were paid to appear at anything..."

... from Islandista blog article Who Does Mya Think She Is?

Mya Lounges In Her Room "Didn't Feel" Like Keeping A Contract Date

Wishful diva and R&B fading star Mya stood up a Crop-over crowd at Club NXS on Saturday night and our friends at Islandista Blog are very upset.

Mya had time to...

... but didn't have what it takes to keep a contract. You know... where folks are counting on you to keep your word. Integrity and all that.

Media Take-Out has picked up on Islandista's foaming-at-the-mouth article so the larger entertainment community will know about Mya's lack of professional reliability. Media Take-Out calls their article BLOGGER: R&B SINGER MYA SWINDLED THE COUNTRY OF BARBADOS OUT OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS!!

Yes, blogging allows the little people to reach a world audience, and our friends at Islandista will probably be read by a hundred thousand people in the next few days.

At Barbados Free Press we are currently running at over 2.5 million visitors annually. As politicians have already discovered, and as Mya is about to learn, times have changed. Every day ordinary people like us communicate their messages to mass world audiences from their kitchen tables.

Good work, Islandista!

Mya Barbados bikini photo courtesy of Gossip Girls

The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program - a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium - reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.

The removal of 550 metric tons of "yellowcake" - the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment - was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam's nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.

AP doesn't mention how old this yellowcake is. We'll get to that, but first the Right claims their now regularly scheduled vindication that Saddam had a nuclear program. Republican blogger American Thinker, July 06, 2008, Disconfirmations Disconfirmed: Saddam Had Nuke Program (Updated), By Randall Hoven

By the way, is it illogical or insane to think that Saddam could not possibly obtain yellowcake, and did not even try to, because one former ambassador went to one country in Africa and said he couldn't find it there?  What about after they found over a million pounds of it just south of Baghdad?  Is it now considered reality-based to think Saddam "sought" yellowcake, just as President Bush said in his 2003 State of the Union address ?

This yellowcake is supposed to vindicar Bush and his supporters, yet it has been under guard by American forces since soon after the initial 2003 invasion, so why haven't Bush and company, Fox News and a multitude of media outlets been pointing fingers and shouting at what would be one of the biggest news stories of the decade.

Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said.

Because this is the same nuclear material that has been in Iraq since the first Gulf War. The nuclear material the George W.H. Bush ( Dubya's dad) let stay in Iraq with IAEA (International Atomic Energy Administration) seals still intact. Bush under the terms of the first Gulf War resolutions could have had it removed and had Saddam pay for the removal, but let it stay. Also another reason the Right's defense of Bush's Niger claims, their trashing of Joseph Wilson and the administration's outing of CIA NOC Valerie Plame made no sense. The Right claimed Saddam was trying to buy yellowcake in 2000/2001. Why would he be so desperate to buy materials he already had which Bush Sr left in country and the IAEA and the CIA knew he had. In an IAEA report on nuclear activities in Iraq between 1991 and 1998,

Indigenous production and overt procurement of uranium compounds
Iraq Nuclear Sites

* Imported 4,006 kg of natural uranium and 6,005 kg of depleted uranium (DU) from Italy in 1979
* Imported 1,767 kg low enriched uranium (LEU) from Italy in 1982
* Imported almost 50 kg of highly enriched uranium (HEU) from Russia and France
* Procured 429 drums containing 138,098 kg yellowcake from Portugal in 1980
* Procured 487 drums containing 148,348 kg yellowcake from Portugal in 1982
* Procured 432 drums containing 137,435 kg of yellowcake from Niger in 1981
* Procured 426 drums containing 139,409 kg of yellowcake from Niger in 1982
* Imported 24,260 kg of uranium dioxide from Brazil between 1981-82
* Produced 109 tonnes of uranium in 168 tonnes of yellowcake at Al Qaim uranium recovery plant, which was constructed between 1982-84
* Produced 420 drums containing 99,457 kg uranium dioxide at Al Jesira uranium conversion facility
* Produced UF6 at Rashdiya Engineering and Design Centre
* Processed uranium dioxide to produce UF4, uranium metal and UF6 at Tuwaitha Chemical Laboratories
* Processed UO2 and yellowcake to produce UO2, U3O8, UO3, UO4, UF4, and uranium metal at Tuwaitha
* Experimental Research Laboratory for Fuel Fabrication
* Processed UO2 to produce UCl4 at Tuwaitha Chemical Engineering Research laboratories

This information was on the internets in 2003. In an IAEA assessment in 1998, almost ten years after the first Gulf War and around the same time as the Clinton administration's Operation Desert Fox (a combination of airstrikes and cruise missile strikes),

* There were no indications to suggest that Iraq was successful in its attempt to produce nuclear weapons. Iraq's explanation of its progress towards the finalisation of a workable design for its nuclear weapons was considered to be consistent with the resources and time scale indicated by the available programme documentation.
* Iraq was at, or close to, the threshold of success in such areas as the production of HEU through the EMIS process, the production and pilot cascading of single-cylinder sub-critical gas centrifuge machines, and the fabrication of the explosive package for a nuclear weapon
* There were no indications to suggest that Iraq had produced more than a few grams of weapons-grade nuclear material through its indigenous processes.
* There were no indications that Iraq otherwise clandestinely acquired weapons-usable material
* All the safeguarded research reactor fuel was verified and fully accounted for by the IAEA and removed from Iraq.
* There were no indications that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for the production of amounts of weapons-usable nuclear material of any practical significance.

If the Right is going to have these regular attacks of WMD Derangement Syndrome its fine with me, just another opportunity to show how deceitful and silly they are when it comes to making excuses for lies that have caused the deaths of the troops and Iraqi people they say they case so much about. A fringe right-wing site called protein wisdom, July 6, 2008, Chimpy McHitlerburton’s smirky rodeo ride through history, 25: the last slice of Saddam cake eaten by secret greedy killbots

even 550 metric tons of the stuff — is not, without further enrichment, capable of causing anything more than a panic. And Saddam was far too busy writing romance novels and terrorizing Kurds and Marsh Arabs to even dream about further enriching the stuff.

Can we assume that when Dick Cheney who was Secretary of Defense during the first Gulf War decided to leave this 550 metric tons of yellowcake, which according to the WMD experts at pw is practically the same thing as having an ICBM pointed at Cincinnati will be getting an e-mail shortly questioning the wisdom of his decision to leave said tonnage in Iraq. Who knows what the infamous Dick will say, Bush, Cheney admit Iraq had no WMD, take new tack

President Bush and his vice president conceded yesterday in the clearest terms yet that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction...

Bush's response was his first reaction to a report released Wednesday by Charles Duelfer, the CIA's top weapons inspector, that contradicted the White House's main argument for invading Iraq.

Vice President Dick Cheney brushed aside Duelfer's central findings – that Hussein not only had no weapons of mass destruction and had not made any since 1991, but that he had no capability of making any – while Bush defended his decision to invade Iraq.

The nuclear materials referred to in the AP report that is being touted as vindication by the Conservative blogs proof of finding WMD why didn't Bush and Cheney have a photo op in 2004 near the berms where the material was buried and claim that they were right all along. No great leaps of logic required, someone would have said you mean the raw materials that Bush Sr and Cheney left there in 1991 is the reason you sent American troops off to die in 2003.

More here, There Is No Cake

and here, Wingnut Hysteria

In fact, the IAEA had inspected the site several times before the Iraq War began in March 2003. The last inspection was on February 11, 2003. United Nations weapons inspectors had visited the facility in December, 2002. The yellowcake was all inventoried and stored in drums with IAEA seals. I wrote a lot about this back in 2003.

WMD - True Believers Club President

Barbados News Media Fails To Print Credible Letter About Serious Public Health Issue

The editor
The Barbados Advocate
Bridgetown, Barbados
Dear Sir/madam,

On Friday the 27th.June 2008, an item of news was aired at 5.30 pm on the radio, which dealt with the recent recall of milk and ice-cream products manufactured by BICO. The chief executive officer of BICO Mr. Edwin Thirlwell, down played the incident and commented on the fact that, testing of the products was done at one of the polyclinics, whereas, in fact, testing ought to have been done at the government laboratories. The inference given was that, the polyclinics were not validated by the located authorities to do such tests. I want to correct the misconceptions which Thirlwell have been disseminating to the listening public.

First of all, let me disclose an interest, since the environmental officer with responsibility for the area, was trained by me in HACCP at the Barbados Community College and as recent as November 2007, under went an intense training course sponsored by the Ministry of Health and the Pan American Health Organization, over a two-week period. I was the course instructor for the training program, which dealt with HACCP and Food Safety Auditing. Included in the program was a section dealing with food recalls. Examples of recalls from the USA were obtained from the Institute of Food Technologists daily news bulletin board for the period July-November 2008 and where appropriate, as far as 2007.

Contrary to what Thirlwell would like the consuming public to believe, a product recall is a serious indictment about the food safety standards of a food processing organization. This is especially so, if as in the case of BICO, the food establishment is HACCP certified. According to Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA): food Recalls: Distributor’s Guide. September 14th. 2007 page 2: “Sometimes, for many different reasons, a product may be manufactured and sold which may make some people ill or injure them, or is in violation of food safety legislation. When an unsafe or violative food has left the control of manufacturer...you must recall the product. If you choose not to conduct a recall, the regulatory agencies must order a recall.”

In the case with which we are dealing, testing was done on five appropriately labeled samples of each of the suspected contaminated products at about three different local facilities. Batch numbers, name of product and manufacturer as well as dated manufactured were noted. Positives results were obtained. The products were found to be contaminated with E.coli, Klebsiella spp.and other enteric organisms. In some cases, colonies were to numerous to count (TNC). BICO then voluntary recalled the defective products.

The organisms found are associated with fecal contamination and are indicative of the fact that, standard sanitary operating procedures (SSOPs) either have broken down or are non-existent.

Two samples of products were then sent by BICO to the Diagnostic Laboratory for further testing. These samples were not coded for batch number, date of manufacture and time of manufacture. These samples passed inspection.

The questions the consuming public must ask itself are: when were these samples taken? Were they taken subsequent to the instructions issued by the environmental officer that, equipment used for milk production, should be stripped, cleaned and sanitized before being used for ice cream manufacture? Were the samples taken from the same batches that were sampled by the environmental officers, or were the samples obtained from newly manufactured products? Also, the consuming public must also ask, was the sampling done statistically, according to methods outline by the American Public Association’s Compendium for the microbiological testing of foods?

It would appear that good manufacturing practices (GMP’s) were not in effect. The condemn products are to be dumped.

Sincerely

Robert D. Lucas, PH.D.
Food Biotechnologist
Bridgetown, Barbados
July 1, 2008

Barbados Free Press Comments...

To our knowledge, none of the unethical lapdog Barbados news media printed this very credible letter that calls into question the capabilities and willingness of BICO to maintain healthy standards for the public.

Should BICO wish to communicate their side of the story with our readers, we would be pleased to prominently publish their letter unedited as it is received.

Barbados Free Press

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As a relative pygmy Macaulay is happy to debunk giants Spurgeon, Moody and Lloyd-Jones as misled pietists.

On the other hand he is happy to boost the reactionary William Wilberforce as an example of the kind of man we need to follow.

I have learnt to mistrust Presbyterian and Anglican church historians because they seem to hanker back to the days when their forebears had real power and so they see those times as some sort of “Golden Age”.

With regard to the abolition of slavery these one-eyed historians always fail to give due credit to the Quaker and non-conformist agitators who really shook up the smug Anglican accommodation to mass slavery and created the environment in which a change of law was acceptable. Some of the agitators were deists and “free-thinkers” who had no christian loyalty at all.

These pietist and sceptical agitators needed a member of the privileged classes to speak for them in parliament because only rich men who were Anglicans could buy their way into parliament.

Propagandists like Macaulay also underplay the effect of various slave rebellions which shook up the establishment and the campaigns of free black men to liberate their brothers.

They also do not report the ineffectual nature of the anti-slave trade bill and Wilberforce's reluctance to press for real abolition which grew from his class based political conservatism. It was up to more “pietist” Methodists and Baptists to truly overturn slavery in the West Indies with the help of a number of insurrections by courageous slaves.

One unintended consequence of the bill was that merchant ships carrying slaves tended to throw the incriminating “cargo” into the water when a British Warship came near. An unfortunate and deadly “own goal”.

William Wilberforce was himself a somewhat self-focussed pietist and this reinforced his intense conservatism and his refusal to help his own oppressed countrymen. He somehow failed to see how sympathising with far-away slaves might have any connection with easing the sufferings of fellow Britons.

In the end selective histories like Macaulay's are post-modern constructions which reflect the writer's tastes rather than attempts to connect the reader with either the past or present.

Living and working in East London I am more grateful for the heritage of Spurgeon (our church was founded in the 1860's) than all the social activists whose monuments are now mosques, museums or demolished. In the same way, the work of Lloyd Jones lives on whereas places like the Mayflower Centre are defunct.

Because it's so poor, the cost of living is moderate, and maybe it's the cost of living that attracts the artists.  More than 500 working artists make their homes in the Valley.

Yet, because artists are quirky people, it might be more than the cost of living that attracts so many of them to the San Luis.  It could be the miles of open space, for instance.  Or the huge elk herd, the bald eagles and the sandhill cranes.  Or perhaps even the stars -- for at night, the sky above the San Luis explodes with the music of light.

Neil's parents were not religious people but they sent their son to church each Sunday.  When he was 13 or 14, he rebelled.  He told his parents he hated church, didn't believe a word of anything he heard there, and was a confirmed agnostic.  "Good", said his mother and father, "You've learned everything a church can teach you about life: Nothing.  We could have told you that ourselves about churches, but we wanted you to figure it out.  You can stop going now."

When Neil turned old enough for high school, his parents decided he needed a better school than the one in the settlement.  So they packed Neil off to live with his grandmother in Colorado Springs and to attend Palmer High.  There, in his first art class, he met Sarah and Beth.  The three shared an intense interest in art and quickly became best friends.

It was Sarah who introduced me to Neil.  Sarah was regular at the Coffee Shop, and the two of us now and then shared each other's company.  At 16, she was poised, sophisticated, and self-confident.  She liked to flirt with older men, even though she knew it couldn't go anywhere, and she once told me how much I disappointed her because I wouldn't flirt.  I felt like a killjoy, and wrote a poem about her to make amends.

Sarah, Beth, and Neil spent hours together each day.  They seemed more mature than many kids their age.  For one thing, both Neil and Sarah held themselves much like adults, and all three of them would look you right in the eye when listening or speaking to you.  For another thing, there were seldom conflicts between them, and the three friends were remarkably free from adolescent dramas.

Back in those days, I heard enough adolescent dramas to fill a social calendar.  I had somehow stumbled into the role of confident for many of the kids who hung out at the Coffee Shop.  Sometimes, up to a half-dozen kids a day would confess their woes to me -- pretty much one kid after the other.  Yet, I understood their need to talk and never rejected them.

Most of their stories were about sex and relationships, and some of the stories were painful to hear, because there were kids who kept repeating the same mistakes over and over again.  Yet, even the kids who didn't repeat their mistakes -- kids like Sarah, for instance -- still seemed determined to make an allotted number of foolish mistakes, for how else do people learn?  I quickly discovered the role of confident was often more depressing than rewarding.

Through-out high school, Sarah, Beth and Neil remained as best friends, but when it was time for college, they parted ways.  Each went to a different university, and while Sarah and Beth stayed in contact with each other, Neil dropped out of the group.

I recall Neil was 22 and back from college when I ran across him one evening at the Coffee Shop.  We chatted for a while and I suggested we go to a restaurant for something to eat.

We ordered beer with our food, and were soon rambling along from one topic to the next.  A few beers into the evening, Neil decided to tell me how he lost his virginity.  "Was it Sarah?", I asked.  I knew she'd been sexually active from the age of 16, and given their close friendship, it seemed logical to suspect her of having been his first partner.

"Not at all", Neil said, "I wasn't ready for sex back then, and I knew it."

"I'm curious how you knew that about yourself."

"I don't make really important decisions up here", he said, pointing to his forehead, "Instead, I go with what my soul tells me."  He looked at me quizzically.  "Do you believe we have a soul, Paul?"

I didn't want to sidetrack us into metaphysics, so I said, "I believe I can understand what you're getting at.  Do you mean something like your sense of yourself...of who you are...of what's right for you?"

"Yes!  That's close!  I knew I wasn't ready for sex because the opportunities never felt right to me.  None of them passed the soul test.  I didn't want my first time to feel wrong in any way."

"Was it ever hard waiting?"

"Sometimes.  Everyone else was having sex, and I wanted to have sex.  I was always horny.  It's not like I wasn't."

"So what happened?" At that point, I wanted him to cut to the chase.

"Last year, I finally met the person I knew was right for me.  We met in a bar, but we weren't drunk, and everything just clicked.  I knew she was the one."

"Did you have sex that night?"

"No.  I called her on Thursday, a few days later, and we got together that Saturday.  I wasn't in a hurry.  I knew it was going to happen.  I took her to dinner, and we went to her place afterwards.  That's when I lost my virginity.  And I was right to wait. I was vindicated.  It was beautiful, Paul.  It felt perfect and it was beautiful."

"Was it her first time too?"

"Oh no!  She was 26 last year -- an older woman, and experienced."

"Are you two still together?"

"No", he said, "We never got together as a couple.  That wasn't something she wanted or I wanted, and we understood that about each other from the start.  We're friends now, but we've only had sex that one time."

"I'm very proud," he went on, "that I waited until everything felt right...until I knew it was right."

"Not many people do that, Neil.", I remarked, "Did your parents raise you to consult your soul?"  I had a strong suspicion at this point that Neil's parents, both artists, raised him to pay careful attention to his "soul".  It seemed like something artists would do naturally -- perhaps even do necessarily.

"Very much so.", Neil said, and he went on about that for a while.  But I wasn't really following him at that point.

I'd begun to feel the beer and my mind was wandering back to the days when Neil was in high school and I was something of the neighborhood confident for a third of the kids at the Coffee Shop.  Neil had made the decision that was right for him and come out shining.  All in all, his story was one of the best I'd heard then or now, and I felt grateful to him for sharing it with me.

There's great necessity in teaching kids to follow rules, for our society couldn't run smoothly without rules. But that evening it seemed to me Neil had learned at a remarkably early age how the really important decisions in life are often best left to the "soul" -- to the spirit, the heart, the gut -- whatever you want to call that part of us that knows how to be true to us.

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This process is motivated by an Islam class I took during my last semester of college. During the class it became clear to me what secularism is and how it operates are hardly settled issues. One view of western secularism could almost be summarized as "atheism". I'm not sure I like that. At the very least, the idea of separating religion from the remainder of the human experience is preposterous: even to say there is no God involved in the human experience is to make a religious statement. To say one can remove non-atheistic views of God from a government (e.g. the "secular government") is equally questionable given government is a reflection of the people who constitute it, and those people can and do hold any number of non-atheistic views. Ergo, to simply make secularism a proxy for atheism or merely public atheism (frequently paired with private piety) is dissatisfying. So I am thinking about how to frame secularism in such a way as to avoid these issues.

While I'm not sure where this particular thread will take me, I'm sure it will be surprising.

“In the Bible the food that man eats, the world of which he must partake in order to live, is given     to him by God, and it is given as communion with God.  The     world as man’s food is not     something “material” and limited to material functions, thus different from, and opposed to, the     specifically “spiritual” functions by which man is related to God.  All that exists is God’s gift to     man, and it all exists to make God known to man, to make man’s life communion with God.  It is     divine love made food, made life for man.”

Food, then, is meant for relationship. In the creation narrative Adam receives God’s gift of food with thanksgiving. He does so because he is a priest. “[Man] stands in the center of the world and unifies it in his act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God.”  I would argue that this is fundamental for not only understanding food as a sacramental gift, but also for ourselves as eaters.  Man eats in order to live, in order to worship and commune with the Living God. L. Shannon Jung writes: “We are mysteriously gifted food from God; this brings into view the mystery of our complex selves and our need to live by grace rather than by grasp.”  The entirety of creation is present as one all-encompassing banquet table for man. In our eating we physically take in that which God has gifted us and use its life giving power to render our bodies as living sacrifices. Food and eating draw us into God’s very being and remind us of his covenant faithfulness, as well as our human vocation as kings and priests.

When journalists are witnesses to breaking news what is their obligation to report that news? In an era when being first isn't even fast enough any more, should a web tool like Wikipedia wait until the pubic has had time to digest the news from more traditional sources? Guidelines for editing Wikipedia state that all entries must be verifiable by other published materials.

That isn't the only debate here. The Wikipedia poster, identified in the Times article as a "junior-level employee" at Internet Broadcasting Services, a St. Paul, Minn. firm that provides Web services to a variety of companies including local NBC affiliates, has been fired. Was he fired for being quick on the draw? Was he fired for updating the online encyclopedia without confirming the facts or was he fired for not knowing that family members traveling abroad still might not have been notified? Or, was he fired for scooping NBC?

It may not have occurred to that poster that family members were in the dark. He may have deduced that if he knew of Russert's death, next of kin surely had been advised. The Times reports that he made the changes believing that the information was already in the public record.

Does his action justify his job loss? Would some form of punishment or discipline been more appropriate?

Journalists have long debated when it is appropriate to release the name(s) of murder victims, accident fatalities and other tragedies. Often newspaper articles report that the names were not released pending notification of family members. Some news organizations follow the rule that if the police release the victim's name then it is okay to print or broadcast it. One can assume, right or wrong, that the police -- or other law enforcement agency -- have notified the family.

But what is the ethical obligation of a newsroom of journalists who witness the sudden -- and newsworthy -- death of their colleague? As journalists they are trained to report the news. As colleagues and friends they are socialized to act as first responders, administering CPR, calling 911 and reaching out to the fallen's loved ones. How do we reconcile our personal and professional beliefs and practices?

I am reminded of an incident several years back when one of my colleagues at Knight-Ridder collapsed in the newsroom. An editor who recognized his symptoms as a likely seizure acted as the first responder and attended to my colleague while another called 911. Our colleague had no history of seizures so calls immediately were being made to family members and HR to obtain medical information that could be useful. Because our office building had numerous entrances, a few of us went downstairs to direct the EMS team. When they didn't arrive after several minutes, another call was made to 911. It was more than 20 minutes -- and several increasingly frantic phone calls later before the ambulance crew arrived.

This incident took place in the late 1980s-- long before Twitter, Wikipedia or even the Internet, but at a time when the District of Columbia's ambulance service was under fire for slow response time, going to the wrong address, getting lost or not showing up at all. Those of us involved in attending to our colleague (who would be fine) were unaware at the time that another colleague was doing what journalists do: reporting the news.

Amazed and angry at the slow EMS response, she took the story out of our newsroom to a wider audience when she telephoned a local television network affiliate that had been covering the ambulance story. A well-known television personality showed up unannounced in our newsroom the next day wanting to interview those of us who had made the 911 calls.

Our colleague who had needed the medical attention was adamant that he would not talk to the press, citing his privacy. Those of us who had been in the newsroom that day and witnessed the incident were supportive of his request for privacy. When the television reporter insisted that he would not leave our newsroom until he had his story, decisions had to be made. As journalists we realized that a story needed to be told about the poor response rate of the city's ambulance service. But as friends and colleagues we also respected the need for privacy.

A compromise was reached. One of the witnesses to the events in the newsroom agreed to be interviewed, but only about the response time for the EMS crew. There would be no discussion about the nature of our colleague's illness, nor would his name or any other identifying factors be revealed.

If that incident happened today, our decisions -- and our moral dilemma -- could be drastically different. The way we share information today and the tools that people use to receive news has completely changed. As new tools emerge, and the time it takes to exchange information lessens, journalists and anyone who participates in the conversation will have to examine what it means to be first.

click photo

"Professional" News Media Has A History Of Lies And Manipulation

Once again critics of blogging like Mia Mottley and Ezra Alleyne are reminded that the so-called "professional media" often distorts, lies and manipulates the news to suit corporate, political, religious and individual agendas.

That is reality, folks. Reporters and editors are people like all the rest of us - and sometimes people forget their duty to the truth and to the public. So we end up with media corporations like Reuters News publishing hundreds of faked news photos. We have supposedly-ethical television journalists like Dan Rather who knowingly published forged documents in support of a story even though experts informed Rather that the documents were fakes before his story went to air. Not to mention that both the New York Times and the L.A. Times have been caught publishing fake news stories.

Barbados News Media Can't Be Trusted Either!

Closer to home in Barbados, we have reporters and editors at The Nation News ignoring important stories like Ronja Juman and how a Barbados Government Minister built a house on land that he expropriated! We have a radio station vowing to never again ask how a Government Minister became a millionaire in a short time on his government salary.

In Barbados we have cowardly news media that still won't mention the story of how a flyover contractor admitted to paying huge bribes on other government projects. The Barbados news media wouldn't print the original story for weeks until they were shamed into it by citizen bloggers like BFP and Barbados Underground.

We also have our famous "disappearing Barbados news stories" where the cowardly and corrupt news media simply never mention a major story again and even remove news stories from their archives to make it like it never even happened.

At least with the blogs we now have a chance to hold the news media accountable and to expose their wrong-doing... the same as our readers do with us when they disagree with something we've said or find any errors.

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Disgusting Deceit By Fox News Television

The latest proof that the public needs to look at "professional news media" with a questioning mind comes from Fox News Television - who aired a supposedly "fair and balanced" story on two New York Times journalists and altered their photos to lower their images in the eyes of the viewers. Fox News used software like PhotoShop to alter the facial features of the two including yellowing their teeth and making their ears stick out. Noses and foreheads were enlarged and dark circles were placed under their eyes.

Will Fox News admit to the deceit and publish an apology?

Guess again...

There is as much chance of Fox News apologising as there is of the Nation News apologising for covering up the Ronja Juman story or confirming if they hired a plagiarist to be their newest columnist. And don't expect the Nation News to publish a story questioning what Owen Arthur did with that $75,000 "campaign donation" cheque he corruptly deposited into his personal bank account.

The next time that someone says that blogs aren't reliable like the "professional" news media is...

Let your friends know that each of us must look with an inquisitive mind at everything that is presented everywhere - but at least on the blogs an individual has a chance to set the record straight and present contrary facts and opinions.

Further reading - click on the photos and various links within our story.

NBC's "To Catch a Predator" has run with a simple idea and captured the attention of millions of television viewers.  Working hand in hand with internet watchdog group, Perverted Justice, the show follows as unassuming child molesters engage in graphic conversations with actors posing as young children and are lured into stings involving law enforcement officials.  Seeming to be a recipe for prime time success, "To Catch a Predator" ran into a nightmare when one of its newest targets, Louis William Conradt Jr., shot himself as police raided his home after he failed to show up to the house used in a Texas sting.  Though Conradt clearly engaged in elicit online conversations with someone he thought was a minor, his sister sued NBC for "steamrolling" authorities to arrest her brother and causing his tragic death:

The trial, in which a judge concluded that the network "crossed the line from responsible journalism to irresponsible and reckless intrusion into law enforcement" ended this week when NBC settled with Conradt's sister for a confidential sum.  As the case has produced many critics of the show, the incident poses some interesting questions...

Discussion Questions:   

1.  Was Chris Hansen and "To Catch a Predator" engaged in unethical journalism?

2.  If so, what makes certain types of journalism unethical?

3.  What do you think NBC should do to the popular show now that it has been forced to settle for what we can assume was millions of dollars?  In other words, should they continue to air the program?

Well, 4th of July just passed. And the celebrations could be seen all around us. Flags flying, parades everywhere and fireworks to scare the cats - and kids. And it made me wonder - what does it mean to be a patriot?

We were sitting outside having a barbeque. American style. Burgers and all. Pretty American on 4th of July. Just us South Africans and an Aussie friend. Anyway... Our backyard neighbors were having their own party. Big family gathering. Even bigger griller. And meat to feed an army. At least a few divisions. And it went on and on. The crowd kept on growing and the noise kept on rising. We didn't have a problem with it. They were having fun. Good clean fun. (And we loved the fireworks later in the evening - all courtesy of our partying neighbors.) And then we noticed the balloons.

Big balloons. All in the American colors. Red, white and blue. Stars and stripes everywhere. Almost every chair had a few of them tied to the back. Flying in the wind. This new type of flag. My wife and myself looked at each other and laughed. A very typical thing for us - we know each other way too well already! We said it at almost the same time, "I bet you those balloons were made in China!"

She won the right to blog on the "Made in China" joke. I really can't say no to her. But it made me think of China. Again. And on the meaning of being proud of your country. Being a patriot.

And no. It wasn't the "Free Tibet" flags that was made in China that made me think of China. It was my recent chats with a few Chinese in China that made me realize they are very proud of their country. Well, most of them anyway. Wherever I went they told me so. How they love their country and how proud they are of how China is developing. And, of course, the Beijing Olympics. For them the Olympics was about the Chinese people and not the Chinese government. A chance for us to meet China and the Chinese people. For them it was about them and their country. And not their government. I know, the Chinese government really secured the Olympics - not the people. But it still made sense. I know how it felt.

I have always loved my country. And my people. But I wasn't always that proud of my government. The Apartheid government was not a regime to be proud of. Trust me. They weren't. But I always loved my country. The mountains, the rivers, everything. And I really loved my people. It was an easy call. I loved my country. I loved my people. And I still saw myself as a patriot. I would defend my country and my people. But not my government. They were corrupt. In every sense of the word. If they asked me to go to war I would say no. If they asked me to vote in their rigged elections I wouldn't. I would not listen to them and I would not support them in anything. But I would defend my country and my people. In my way. By protesting against the Apartheid regime. By speaking out when ever I got the chance. I would defy them. And challenge them. Because I was a patriot.

Over here in America people are asking the patriotism question. Again. And I am not just talking about Obama. Whether him wearing a flag or not makes him more or less patriotic. Like everyone wears that each day. Go do a Google search on the Mac and see how many times he wears one. Being a vet does not give you a free pass. Or at least I don't think so. But this isn't about Obama. Maybe only in an indirect way. The questions about him being American and being a patriot triggered some initial thoughts. But it isn't about him. No, it's about people who are claiming to be more patriotic than the next.

Supporting the war. That makes you a patriot. Being against gay marriages. That makes you a patriot. Not criticising President Bush. That makes you a patriot. Saying it is okay to hold people without trail and (maybe) torturing them. That makes you a patriot. Being in favour of subsidies for big oil but against universal health care. That makes you a patriot. Being Republican. Being conservative and against liberals. Listening to Rush and Bill. Watching Fox. Pro-flag. Anti-protests. And so on. And so on. It all makes you a patriot.

Or does it?

Were you a patriot if you supported the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII? Or were you a patriot when you tried to speak out against it? Were you a patriot when you supported segregation? Or were you a patriot when you acted against it? Were you a patriot when you lynched blacks and burned crosses and churches all over? Or were you a patriot when you marched against it? Were you a patriot when you supported a war to get rid of weapons of mass destruction? Or were you a patriot when you protested against a war with little evidence to support the claims of the President? Are you a patriot when you support a war no matter what the reasons? Or are you a patriot when you believe you can support the soldiers and still not agree with the war? Are you a patriot when you say other Americans are not American enough because they do not agree with everything you do or say? Or are you a patriot when you say that being an American means celebrating and loving diversity of all kinds - religion, color, languages, political thoughts, food and even stupid bloody movies?

You decide. I am not here to tell you what patriotism means in America. I can only tell you what it means for me as a South African. It means loving my country. Believing in my people. Caring for those around me. Looking after our land and the animals who live there. And speaking out when my government is unjust. Or just plain wrong. They are not my country. They are not my people. They do not stand for what my country stand for. Or at least not what the majority of us want our country to stand for. They are our government. They come and go. The people, the land and the spirit that make us never die. The meaning of being South African never come and go. It is more than the sum of us. It is that intangible meaning of us.

I am a patriotic South African when I disagree with my government when they are wrong. I am a patriot when I speak out against stupid decisions made by my government. I was a patriot when I protested against the government during Apartheid. I am a patriot when I speak out and protest against my government when I believe they are not being true to what we want our country to stand for - freedom, tolerance, equality and celebrating our diversity. And all the other good stuff.

And don't confuse the patriotism bit with loving it or being proud of it. I love my children. But I am not proud of them when they do something wrong. I still love them. I still care for them. Deeply and without question. No less than before. But I also know I have to remind them of the rules. Our rules. Rules of respect, love and hard work. It does not make me less of a dad just because they need to know when I am disappointed with them. I tell them. But I also tell them I love them no less. I love them. I care for them. But I can't always be proud of them. But I can be even more proud of them when they make right what they did wrong. That makes me love them even more. When they hold up their hands and say, "Yeah, I was wrong. Sorry dad."

But driving a car made in Japan? Wearing clothes made in India? Eating food grown in Mexico? Drinking coffee grown in Ethiopia? Buying gas imported from Saudi Arabia? Reading books written by an Englishman? Watching a French movie? Having balloons made in China?

I don't know. I like it when I see something made in South Africa. But I don't buy it just because it is made in South Africa. I buy it (or not) because of many reasons - price, quality, taste, smell, functionality etc. Whatever. I buy it when I can. But I won't buy a SUV just because it was made in South Africa. I'll buy the less thirsty car made wherever.

A patriot. What is it? You decide. Because you make it. You build your country with every decision you make. The easy decisions and the difficult ones. They all count. There is no end. You build it every day. America is different from what it was a 100 years ago. Every single day you are still working on it. Keeping the good bits alive. And turning it into something new and making it relevant for society today. No end game. It's not a game. It a journey. With no end destination. And every step counts. Every person count.

Every American count. Every American equals one brick. And you decide how strong you want this structure called America to be. You place your brick. You make it strong or you make it weak. It isn't easy. And it has never been easy to build this great nation. It wasn't easy to fight the British for independence. It wasn't easy to free the slaves. It wasn't easy to give women voting rights. It wasn't easy to fight in WWII. It wasn't easy to end segregation. It wasn't easy to pull out of Vietnam. But it was the right thing to do.

Are you a patriot? Just wait before you answer. First ask yourself what does it mean to be a patriot? Define it. Look around and ask if this is what your fellow countrymen mean by it? Do you agree with it? What is your America? Happy you got all the info you need? Good. Now answer it. Are you a patriot?

Just don't forget to look in the mirror when you answer.

From Chapter 3 of the 1997 UNFPA "State of World Population":

"In most of the world the initiation, timing and final level of fertility are now recognized as a matter of conscious choice. When asked in surveys, men and women are increasingly able to indicate how many children they would like to have, what their ideal number of children is, how many children they would want to have if they were starting their reproductive life now, and whether or not their last birth was wanted or timed as they would have preferred. This is in marked contrast to three decades ago, in the infancy of national population programmes, when fatalistic answers (“What-ever happens, happens,” “It’s up to God”) accounted for a significant minority of responses."

In the eyes of the United Nations, believing that the birth of children is "up to God" is nothing short of fatalism. Unfortunately, the same is true in the hearts and minds of countless American Evangelicals...even many of the Reformed ones. In their defense of the Sovereign work of God in salvation, it would seem that many in the Reformed camp have lost sight of the Sovereign work of God in procreation. While "monergism" is their battle cry for the new birth, "synergism" has usurped their understanding of the natural one. In their defense of family planning, they have muddied the waters of their procreative theology. Allow me to attempt to explain...

In commenting on political language and the use of euphemism, George Orwell once wrote:

"Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them...The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink."

"Family planning" is a euphemistic term that a host of Reformed Protestants have bought into, hook, line, and sinker (or for you non-fishers out there, that means that we've swallowed the entire thing!). As Reformed Protestants, we rightly feel uncomfortable calling the intentional closing of the womb "birth control", for it calls to mind a sense of human independence that sends shudders down our 5-Point spines. To infer that man can control something as high and holy as the creation of a new life in image of the Triune Sovereign God of the universe is an idea that, to stomach, must be softened into a kinder, cooler understanding of "family planning" or "reproductive self-determination".

Self-determination, you say? What say you, Dr. Luther? What power have we over the "miracle of life"?:

"Although God is wont to confirm His doctrines by miracles, without any respect to the carnality of the age: nor is He at all moved, either by the merits or demerits of a carnal age, but by pure mercy and grace, and a love of souls which are to be confirmed, by solid truth, unto their glory. But we give you the choice of working any miracles, as small an one as you please.

But come! I, in order to irritate your Baal into action, insult, and challenge you to create even one frog, in the name, and by virtue of "Free-will;" of which, the Gentile and impious Magi in Egypt, could create many. I will not put you to the task of creating lice; which, neither could they produce. But I will descend a little lower yet. Take even one flea, or louse, (for you tempt and deride our God by your 'curing of the lame horse,') and if, after you have combined all the powers, and concentrated all the efforts both of your god and your advocates, you can, in the name and by virtue of "Free-will," kill it, you shall be victors; your cause shall be established; and we also will immediately come over and adore that god of yours, that wonderful killer of the louse. Not that I deny, that you could even remove mountains; but it is one thing to say, that a certain thing was done by "Free-will," and another to prove it." - sect. 28 of The Bondage of the Will

Luther argued that in the power of his own will, Erasmus could not even kill one flea - and yet we live today as if by our wills we can create a child bearing the image of God. Ask ANY infertile couple today, and they will earnestly affirm that the human will is powerless to provide a child. They have learned from experience that "Unless the Lord builds the house, they who build it labor in vain." But what does that verse even mean? Let's take a look at it's Inspired context:

"Unless the LORD builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchman stays awake in vain.
It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives to his beloved sleep.
Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth.
Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate."
- (Psa 127)

In his commentary on Psalm 127, Calvin writes this about God's work in our begetting of children:

"The majority of mankind dream, that after God had once ordained this at the beginning, children were thenceforth begotten solely by a secret instinct of nature, God ceasing to interfere in the matter; and even those who are endued with some sense of piety - do not acknowledge that his providential care descends to this particular case... With the view of correcting this preposterous error, Solomon calls children the heritage of God and the fruit of the womb his gift."

Friends, far too many of us are preaching like Calvinists and yet procreating like Arminians. We trust God for all things, but those things we think we can control for ourselves. We love to talk about God's sovereignty and man's responsibility in theory, but we treat it quite different in real life. God's sovereignty is not a back-up plan if our "family planning" responsibilities fail to produce the desired results. We must recognize that we do not effect the new birth in any human being, nor must we presume that we ultimately effect the natural one. Children are a gift, not a biological side effect. Likewise, converts are a fruit of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, not ultimately a result of our effectiveness in presentation or planning (and even then, our planning would be in favor of, and not counter to, new converts). As Calvin writes, "Adam did not take a wife to himself at his own will, but received her as offered and appropriated to him by God." Adam had no more ability to "plan" for a wife than we do to "plan" for a child. The Originator and Preempter of them both is God. Kathryn Blanchard puts it bluntly, "The honor God gives in allowing humans to be parents is not something to be controlled, regretted, or gloated over, but to be humbly received. It is after God's image - not individual humans' own - that these children are formed." And Calvin again emphasizes the same truth in his commentary on Genesis:

"...when [Jacob] replies that his numerous seed had been given him by God, he acknowledges and confesses that children are not so produced by nature to subvert the truth of the declaration, that the fruit of the womb is a reward and gift of God. And truly, since the fecundity of brute animals is the gift of God, how much more is this the case with men, who are created after His own image. Let parents then learn to consider, and to celebrate the singular kindness of God, in their offspring."

Beloved, it's time we recover a Reformed view of procreation, and it starts with the reaffirmation that God is the sovereign Creator of marriage, sex, and children - and we are the responsible creatures who owe him our obedience. Blanchard reminds us that ultimately, "We are not masters of our own procreative destinies." May we take care, lest we be put to shame by acting like we are.

'BH

Torture so as to extract information, should stay completely unconstitutional, contrarily to the Bush administration's practice. This official prohibition is a showcase of a general will to improve morality, that the top civilization should maintain as long as possible. But ticking time bomb scenarios will always occur, in urban counterinsurgency, and people should remember that secret services are secret for good reasons (one of them being that you do not want to know what they are doing).

Inflicting pain as a vengeance or to terrorize miscreants is another form of torture entirely. That sort of torture is still practiced massively, because civilization needs repression (many legal sanctions involve suffering, and, in this essay, we call that torture, by logical coherence). Pseudo naive occupiers like the USA should remember that occupying someone's else country, per se, is mass torture. (Sometimes such torture can be justified, as the occupations of Germany and Japan in 1945 were; sometimes not, and then it is unjustifiable mass torture).

In general torture avoidance should be viewed as a challenge, one of the engines of improving civilization: how can we improve people by persuading and modifying behaviors rather than using brute force and horror, treating people as vicious beasts?
***

DEFINITION OF TORTURE:
There is no better illustration of the devolution of the USA than the attempt to make torture legal. A few years back, the Bush administration and its employee, UC Berkeley professor, John Yoo, bellowed that torture was necessary. In their stupidity, they tried to make it a new constitutional right, the Right to Torture. Never mind that torture is forbidden by international law.

We will thereafter use the most general definition of torture we can think of: TORTURE IS ANY SEVERE PAIN OR SUFFERING INTENTIONALLY INFLICTED ON A PERSON (this toughens up the UN definition). Our reason for being so general is that major infliction of pain and suffering is often allowed, on the ground that it is not torture (according to the United Nations). In our sense, carpet bombing of German cities by the RAF during WWII was torture. Similarly the demolition of terrorists' houses by Israel is torture. But, from our point of view, torture does not have to be avoided at all and any cost. There are worse things than inflicting torture. For example one could inflict death. Or lose civilization outright.
***

NO POTENTIAL SEVERE PUNISHMENT, NO CIVILIZATION:
With our severe definition of torture, clearly torture has been central to civilization. Just as the threat of being shot may hold back some criminals, the threat of torture-as-punishment can work wonders to instill the respect of the law. All major civilizations used deliberate, severe punishment. The USA has several millions people deprived of freedom, many thousands on so called "death row" awaiting execution. China executed criminals with the method of the 1,000 cuts all the way into the twentieth century (photographic documentation of this activity exists). The Roman republic used torture extensively. Just as some firms specialized in the capture of escaped slaves, other Roman firms specialized in providing with private torture. In Rome torture was viewed as entertainment, and particularly ingeniously cruel methods of executions were devised. With sometimes a large proportion of the population in slavery, Rome had to maintain legal terror: "Dura lex, sed lex" (The law is hard, but it's the law). On the positive side, under Roman terror, a quarter of mankind lived in a state of law. The enforcement of law is the core of what makes civilization possible.

The modern, "politically correct", attitude, relative to such horrors as Roman crucifixion, is to disregard the Roman experience as irrelevant to our times. But such is not the case. It was torture that made Roman law tough. And thus effective. Oh, by the way, torture could not be used against Roman citizens. It was a terrible offense, very severely punished.

***

HOW THE CHRISTIAN SUPPRESSION OF SEVERE PUNISHMENT LED TO THE DARK AGES:
The Christian catastrophe called the "Dark Ages" demonstrated the importance of punishment. First, of course, the Christians burned all the books, killed all the intellectuals, and killed all the non "Catholic Orthodox", except for a few Jews. But still some of the old order had resisted. So the Christians changed tactics. Maybe tired and bored after all of these exertions, they proclaimed loud and clear they did not want to live in the world anymore. According to Augustine', there were two cities, one on the ground (bad), and one in the clouds (good). Eight hundred years earlier, Aristophane had used that imagery in a comedy to make fun of Athens' colonization policies. But Augustine was not joking: Christians wanted the world destroyed in a process called the Apocalypse (then, and only then, their superhero, God and son of God, would come back). To destroy the world more thoroughly, the Christians decided to destroy law enforcement.

So super rich Christian bishops decided it was non Christian to torture or kill bandits and the like. This way they would make sure that whatever was left of society would crash and burn. Criminality became highly profitable and so high that the society of the later Roman empire totally broke down. For a while, the bishops, who formed a governing plutocracy, did not mind; they were living off their vast estates, fed by armies of slaves, protected by armies of mercenaries. But, in the end, it became unbearable, the hypocritical campaign of the bishops against torture and legal violence aggravated the collapse of civilization. Even the bishops understood that morality needed a sword. They found it in the double bladed giant battle ax of the Pagan Franks.
***

THE FRANKISH RENAISSANCE, OR THE FEROCITY OF CIVILIZATION:
When the Franks took power, they reestablished severe punishment, in other words, torture. An example: counterfeit currency had been a very severe problem of the later Roman empire (it created huge inflation and destruction of the respect for the state). Frankish justice solved this difficulty by instituting a standard punishment for this offense: slowly boiling the counterfeiters alive. The Franks were men of wealth and taste, so, sometimes, the boiling was in wine.

Interestingly, once the Muslims had been thrown out, and the frontiers pushed way back into Eastern Europe, the Imperium Francorum, the empire of the Francs, became very quiet (until the next waves of invasion). Severe punishment worked.

The European Middle Ages kept on going along those lines. Respect for the law was encouraged by imposing punishments as severe as those of Rome. This had nothing to do with "Dark Ages" and fascism, quite the opposite. The more ferocious the repression o f the ultimate crimes, the more advanced the society. A few examples:

A fanatical Catholic (paid by the eminent fascist, the Spanish emperor Philip II) assassinated William ("The Silent") of Orange, founder of the republic of the Netherlands. The assassin was executed by "execrable" tortures over several days (1584 CE). As the Dutch republic gained ascendency, the first powerful republic since Rome, it became ever more severe, following the republican Roman legal model, sometimes more ferociously. Corrupt Dutch officials were separated from their entire skin, before leaving this world, giving them time to fully recognize the disposable nature of their ways. Something similar happened after the assassination of the good King Henri IV of France (a Protestant turned Catholic that had put an end to the religious wars, and instituted deep social reforms). The assassin, the giant Ravaillac, resisted quartering, the horses got exhausted, so the public came forth, and succeeded, all pulling together, where the animals had failed. (According to the contemporary UN, such examples do not constitute torture, since they were fully legal executions).

Thus LOCAL morally correct posturing is not necessarily GLOBALLY correct moral posturing. Many people, such as many Christian bishops around 400 CE, or people who take positions of principle against severe punishment, do not examine carefully enough the fact that "homo homini lupus" (man is a wolf for man) as the Roman playwright Plautus put it shortly after the Second Punic War (~ 200BCE).

***

TORTURE IS DOING WELL:
Let's come back to the present for a moment. According to Amnesty International, 75% of states use torture. Now it is true that, in some circumstances, torture can be very effective, be it to extract information quick, or for punishment on the side.

Torture is much more ubiquitous than is generally believed. The advancement of technology has allowed for the advancement of torture. New forms of torture have appeared (not just electricity, but sleep deprivation, various forms of exposure, from cold to loud noises, to uncomfortable positions, all very delicately controlled). Using them allows modern torturers to claim they are not torturing because the new forms of torture are not on the official list of recognized historical tortures. Many states can now imprison people in an extra judicial way for more than a few days if they are suspected of terrorism (this assists the police, but sometimes suffering maybe the real objective).
***

GOOD TORTURE, COUNTERPRODUCTIVE POLITICS:
Terrorist networks have been dismantled by torture. Torture was used as an efficient counter insurrection technique by French paratroopers in the Battle of Algiers. With time very limited to find the next bomb maker, once one had been caught, and with very soft (non fanatical) culprits (who typically transported bomb elements), torture allowed to expose terrorist cells before senior terrorists could flee. This is a general observation; if police catches someone with a hidden ticking time bomb somewhere, and they know that the bomber will probably not resist to torture, they may be derelict not to use it. The police is indeed faced with a choice between violating one law protecting the criminal, and civilization, and an other law, somewhat opposite, protecting the innocent, and civilization. Not a nice choice, and a good reason for the legal systems to close their eyes SOMETIMES.

On the negative side, though, the usage of torture by the French military became an excuse by the general French opinion (that did not want to have anything to do with Algeria!) to turn against attempts of preserving some sort of French-Algerian commonwealth (although the Algerian population had voted massively for it in a referendum!).

So the public opinion struggle was lost by the very methods that won the military struggle. This case was thoroughly studied by the Pentagon and Israel. The Pentagon used torture lightly in Iraq, keeping the French example in mind. Israel uses a careful mix of scrupulous law abiding with extremely severe punishment akin to torture by association (such as the immediate demolition of terrorists' houses). But the Israeli tactics make sense, to insure the survival of Israel. The family of the assassin of William of Orange was ennobled by the fascist Philippe II of Burgundy and Spain, and became instantaneously rich. Having the family dwelling demolished, probably makes the Qur'an theses about going to heavens by killing, significantly less attractive. Whereas the Dutch republic had an immensely powerful ally in France, also perpetually fighting Spain and Burgundy, Israel does not have anybody (sending weapons and money is one thing, sending soldiers, another).
***

WHY SHOULD TORTURE BE MADE ILLEGAL?
At first sight, it's an argument that is hard to make. The present world is, globally, at peace, but in no small measure because of the IMPLICIT TERROR exerted by the five permanent member states of the United Nation Security Council. Each of them have the means of killing hundreds of millions of people, and have exhibited, as an alliance during WWII, their readiness to use the most severe methods to crush the enemy, without consideration for the squeamish side. So peace, quiet, and civilization are blossoming, but under the threat that any significant deviation will be corrected by Armageddon. The USA has declared it reserves for itself the right of first use of nuclear weapons. France has explicitly announced that, besides this, she reserves the right of replying to mass terrorism with nukes (so like the Israelis with the demolition of the houses, but on a somewhat more exalted scale). Iran took that French warning personally, for some reason. Russia, China and Israel don't need to issue warnings (Israel is loudly deploying a second (nuclear) strike capability) .

But of course the point is that, when fighting for survival, democracies will do whatever it takes (some French politicians called for a cease fire in June 1940, because France was fighting at the same time Nazi Germany, the USSR, and, basically, the USA; it was a bit too much, even for the French, so they decided to take a vacation from it all, while the USA figured out who it was that they wanted to be allied with). THE ULTIMATE MORALITY IS THAT OF SURVIVAL (Iran should contemplate this as it bellows for the destruction of Israel; Israel may have noticed this: one of the lessons of Nazism is that bellowing criminal idiots should be taken seriously in a timely manner).

So democracies or civilizations (China) fighting for survival NEED TO BE ATROCIOUS sometimes. But that means that if they are not fighting for survival, they do not need to be atrocious. Being more advanced in their human interactions than the (less democratic and less civilized) rest of the planet, they need to keep their moral superiority, so they have a good reason to eschew the unsophisticated tortures more primitive places have to use.
***

WHY THE EUROPEAN MIDDLE AGES WAS LESS TORTUROUS THAN ISLAM:
As we said there are two main types of governmental torture: torture to enforce the law, and torture to extract information. The first sort of torture can be more or less extensive, depending how demanding and twisted the law is. For example Allah encouraged slavery and torture (as confirmed by reading a non watered down version of the Qur'an). These are situations that are unnatural to animals, and the more unnatural, the more severe the violence. So there were laws in North Africa, up to the nineteenth century, to punish severely slaves who tried to escape. Impaling was standard. It's severe torture: the condemned could survive days.

When the Turkish army marched into Europe, it was helped by impaling. After seeing victims squirm around a pole, the public was much more outwardly respectful of anything Turkish. This non sense stopped when Vlad ("the Impaler") started to use impaling just as well, and various tortures, to discourage Turkish invaders and their collaborators. The Turkish army was thrown out by its own methods.

In eight century Spain (revered by bin Laden), many people who had converted to Islam by convenience tried to convert back to Catholicism, once they figured out that Islam was not nice (at the time Catholicism, broken by the Franks, was totally relax). Many were executed by horrible means, such as crucifixion upside down (the official line of Islamist scholars, to this day, is to say those Christians wanted to be tortured). In Islam being an apostate (somebody one feels is renouncing Islam) is subject to the death penalty (the idea, as most things Islamist, comes from old Judaism). By contrast in Carolingian Francia, people could convert back and forth into whatever. Christians would become Jews, and thousands of Muslims were quietly left to do whatever (we know there were huge numbers of these, from blood and genetic analyses).
***

WHY THE EUROPEAN MIDDLE AGES QUIT TORTURE TO EXTRACT INFORMATION:
To understand what is wrong with using torture-for-extracting-information, one should look at what happened during the Middle Ages. By 1300 CE, the kingdom of France had the best torturers who ever were. The information they obtained were confirmed in excess of 90%.

Nevertheless, a suspect's statements under torture could NOT be used in judicial discovery; any admission had to be reconfirmed in front of the judge, without torture being applied. Justice knew people would say whatever to get the torture to stop, and that whatever was useless in serious judicial proceedings. So, as far as justice was concerned, torture was a loss of time. Moreover it corrupted the image justice wanted to give of itself. When Joan of Arc was interrogated (1431), the judges decided to avoid using any torture to make the judicial process more believable.

By 1600 CE, though, the ratio of confirmation under judicial inquiry of facts admitted under torture had fallen close to zero. The tortures had become too nice to persuade hard core criminals to talk.

But what did torture in was that the judges did not need the hints torture would provide with. Why? Simply because, by 1300 CE, under Philippe IV, Le Bel, the modern police state had been created, with methods of inquiry and arrest much more advanced than the best imperial Rome ever had (examples: the Templar monks were arrested all over at the same exact time; when the French judicial system decided to arrest the Pope, it sent a commando to Rome). Torture-to-extract-information had become irrelevant.
***

DOES TORTURE WORK WITH MARTYRS?
Well, it sure does: few things real martyrs love as much as torture. That is why one has to laugh when the Bushmen thought torture would cure Islamist fascism. It is said all over the Qur'an that the best way to insure the good graces of Allah (the great fascist in the sky) is to kill and suffer in His name. So, when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, "the main architect of 9/11", was approached with a wet towel for his "water boarding", if he was the genuine thing, all he probably regretted was the absence of something more spectacular, like red hot pincers. Since the  Bush administration had been busy to proclaim that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed talked really a lot after being "water boarded".

That sounded strange: history is full of serious terrorists who resisted splendidly to terrible tortures (the assassin of William of Orange stayed calm over the days of terrible tortures he endured). As it turned out, this was more than strange, it was disinformation: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed succumbed not to torture, but to the sort of friendly interviewing methods already used during Joan of Arc's trial.

Hard core terrorists have determined that their moral cause is so important that pain can be inflicted to the totally innocent (it's the same moral reasoning that allowed carpet and nuclear bombings by the democratic allies over German and Japanese, or French cities during WWII). Terrorism overrides basic instincts. To make such people give valuable information, one has to taunt the moral gymnastics they have indulged in first, Those moral contortions are central to their cause, and they will defend, hence expose them, as they desperately try to justify themselves. That, in turn, is bound to reveal the mental networks behind them.
***

Conclusion: TO KILL TORTURE, LOOK AT IT IN THE FACE.

Animals come equipped with ethics. Hungry monkeys, or even rats would refuse to eat (at least for a while) if another of their fellow got shocked with electricity, each time they went for a bite. Morality is not just human, it's deeper than that. Monkeys don't need the rewards of God to be good. So man is not THE moral animal. All social advanced animals are moral.

Animals actually come equipped with a hierarchy of ethical systems. In ultimate circumstances, they switch to the morality of survival. Not necessarily the survival of the individual; it's often the survival of the group. Human beings are different in degree; their switch to the group survival mode is much more ferocious. When a human being is fully persuaded of total moral righteousness, NO PAIN IS HIGH ENOUGH (this comes from humans being the most carnivorous of primates, so they ally primate care with predatory ferocity). There are examples of Roman officers calmly putting one of their own fists in a brazier until it got totally consumed, to impress enemies with their moral superiority.

The ultimate human group is civilization itself. For its survival, it's crucial to produce ever more gentle human beings, because the technology of mass destruction is getting ever better (the ultimate one at this point being the greenhouse weapon). In that sense, it would be better if everyone acted to completely avoid deliberately inflicting pain and suffering on people. This is not an option, though, so all what's left, as usual, is to mitigate.

Carefully observing what one is doing, and the others are doing, is a first step.

It would seem that people who let practice carpet bombing on children in their name, to fill up their truck with oil, are in a difficult situation, arguing for the immorality of bothering a terrorist with pliers. Still, many people who did not object that much against the "shock and awe" destruction of Iraq, are shrill about torture. In other words, when it's deemed advantageous to them to use lethal cruelty and massive mayhem on millions, it's OK. Then, in a nice ethical pirouette, to proclaim to the world they are good people nevertheless, they squeal when, "the main architect of 9/11", is approached with a wet towel. In other words, a lot of the left (including the democrats) are hiding behind words and carefully nurtured obsessions what they are truly doing. As soon as they allowed the invasion of Iraq, and, unbelievably, its destruction, in violation of the Geneva Conventions, American people allowed mass torture to be used in their name, and for their wasteful way of life.

The torture question is difficult. Still, one wants civilization to progress. The police state replaced torture, but it cannot work with too primitive a population (that is why Rome allowed torture of the presumably more primitive slaves, but not of citizens). That goes inside countries, but also between countries. Civilization has to cling to the official line, and the practice, of doing as little torture as possible. It is unlawful for a pilot to crash a plane. Nevertheless, sometimes, a pilot, having encountered some technical difficulty, may have to crash it, because that's the best option left.

Torture is sometimes unavoidable, but it should be officially discouraged always, and should not be allowed to hide in plain sight, by calling it by other names. If people deny that what is happening is happening, one cannot change it.

Posturing is fun, but it's not moral.
***

Patrice Ayme.

www.patriceayme.com/

Technical Addenda:
1) According to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, torture is "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person" to extract information. Torture, so defined, exclude lawful punishment (so slowly burning alive at the stake is OK, if decided by judicial process, according to the UN). The definition used by the UN also forgets that, people (are made to) love to hurt people (that happens in conflicts, but also out of the blue, from raw psychobiology unchained). That is why we used the more general definition above. It gives logical coherence.

2) Why did the USA revert to torture? Why such a reversion to the past? Because, in the last few years, the US mood has been to go back, clinging to the hope of reliving the past, the future slipping out of reach of the "American Dream" ... As soon as the USA threatened to destroy Iraq, it was engaging in torture. Abu Graib and Guantanamo are just minuscule, but telling, details.

3) The American reversal to the past is general. In June 2008, the US Supreme Court found that US citizens had a Constitutional Right to shoot each other (guns are mostly used to kill family members). New York has had a ban on guns for nearly a century. But never mind, it's morning in America. The Supreme Court decision was the first on the subject in seventy years. Reverting to the distant past has become fashionable in the USA, in a desperate attempt to believe that the "American Dream" and its associated benevolent plutocracy, make the world all it could be.  Thus California hopes to soon be the state with the lowest educational budget per child, of the entire 50 states (now it's only 49th).

The Russians call World War II "The Great Patriotic War." The currentlongest of our wars could well be called the same thing. It is a warthat originated in the orgy of patriotism ("U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!")that followed the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and hasbeen sustained by the patriotism of those who support it ("Our soldiersare defending American freedom") and false promises of some latter-dayprophets ("We are winning the war in Iraq.") It is likely to be revivedby the Iranian attack that the McCainites see as their main chance ofwinning the election.

Bush used phony patriotism to start war :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Andrew Greeley

Yu argues that Aristotle starts off my suggesting that there is a "supreme end for a human life as a whole, and that this end is the human end." Of course, for Yu it is eudaimonia that plays this role for Aristotle, and Yu suggests that it is dao that plays that role in Confucius. So, Yu argues that "Aristotle's eudaimonism is about what is a good human life, and Confucius' theory of dao is about which way a human life should take." (p 25).

I suppose there are a number of places that Yu's thesis can be pressed, or that the question could be pushed just how far this comparison can be made, but my interest (at this point) is more taxonomical (as it has been in previous posts on this subject). Let's start here: Aristotle suggests that

It may be said that every individual man and all men in common aim at a certain end which determines what they choose and what they avoid.

Of course, for Aristotle, as Yu puts it, this common aim is happiness; it is this end which we pursue for itself and not for the sake of something else. In addition, this end, once we have determined what its components are, sets the ends that we will pursue that are subordinate to happiness. So, if happiness is gustatory delight, we then aim for the right foods.

Yu makes note of the interesting point that since happiness is not pursued for the sake of anything else, the value of eudaimonia simply self-evident. As Yu notes, in the Euthydemus Socrates points out that people who ask what the point of happiness is are stupid, given that such a question makes no sense. The value of eudaimonia is either intuitively apparent, or perceptually evident; as a result, questions denying it are dismissed (similar, I suppose, to the way Locke treats skepticism about the external world). Clearly, if Yu is right, we should expect a similar thesis about the value of dao.

I have a few questions about all of this.

1. Yu notes directly afterward that the value of dao is seen as dictated by the will of Heaven. What Yu is not clear on is whether the value of the dao stems from the fact that its exemplification is demanded by Heaven. If this is the thesis, then there seems to me to be a disconnect on some level between eudaimonia and dao. the former has its value in a non-derivative sense, whereas the latter finds its value in a derivative sort of deontic sense (the value of dao stems from the fact that one must follow the commands of Heaven). Whether Yu intends for this to the case, I cannot say; unfortunately he doesn't seem concerned with taxonomical questions about how to understand the position of "the human good" in the general theory as a whole.

2. Let's abstract away from (1) for a second for another question. According to Yu's reading of Aristotle, it is eudaimonia that sets the standard for what has value; once this is accomplished, what should be desired follows as a result of unpacking what human flourishing is. If the comparison is apt, the same should apply for dao. But again Yu gives us no hint (that I can see) to the question: "is the human good evaluative or not?"

Let's take a non-evaluative case first. If I say that a specimen of kind X is acting in a way that is characteristic of Xs, or perhaps that actualizes the essence of Xs (which doesn't necessarily mean "acting characteristic of Xs, I suppose), then this is one way of talking about an X as "good." In this case, it just means "an exemplar specimen with respect to what Xs are." But this doesn't imply that Xs ought to be characteristic or exemplar Xs, or that there is anything evaluatively "bad" about failing to fulfill what it means to be an X.

An evaluative case would be different. Here, one might argue that Xs that fail to exemplify their X-hood are bad, less real, or in some way falling short of what Xs should be. Seen from a neutral standpoint (if one is possible), exemplary Xs are normatively better than Xs that are non-exemplary.

Let's return to Yu. In what way should we take this thesis about Confucius? Of course, this depends on figuring out what Yu means about Aristotle and how he sees the theory of eudaimonia. Unfortunately, Yu does not satisfy in this regard, and throughout the short sub-chapter actually seems to shift back and forth between treating eudaimonia as something that is good evaluatively and something that is not (but which can be seen as something one should pursue from the standpoint of desire, something which he thinks apparently that we naturally do anyway, as I noted at the top).

So I put the question out there: is dao an evaluative or non-evaluative good? From a neutral standpoint, are those who walk the path better than those who do not? Or is dao a good in an evaluative sense only when it is approach from the standpoint of those who desire it (even if that desire is seen as intuitively evident or natural). If it is the latter sense, then the goods associated with a full theory of what the dao is will turn out perhaps to be "internal goods" that are relative to a certain way of life, but goods that will not be seen as valuable ends until one takes on the larger end (the value of the dao) from which the others goods stem.

I must admit, although I do like Yu's book, I find his ambiguity on these sorts of questions (what type of good is the human good?) frustrating. If we are to ascertain whether eudaimonia and dao are comparative in the sense that he wants, we need to be more demanding about taxonomy. Is they are both "the human good" from which other valuable ends spring, we need to first get clear on what "the human good" means, or could mean, and then apply it to Aristotle, and then to Confucius.

Therefore while telling the needs for the ethics ,the managers are told the profound truth that they should not expect employee to practice ethics unless they satisfy minimum needs i.e food clothing and house .

One must be given the minimum resources for satisfying three basic needs .

I remember the story of Deewar ,A blockbuster Bollywood movie where Shashi Kapoor (Police Officer) while chasing, killed one poor teenage boy mistaking him for thief. Latter on he came to know that poor teenage boy actually stole bread for poor starving family .

It is utter foolishness to expect ethical and good action in the society where poor people are not able to get two square meals a day. Govt ,companies and employers should emphasize that wealth generated by them is shared evenly to create happiness for themselves and others.