A Spork in the Drawer

Learning From The Experts

Since they took power in January 2001 BushCo™ has been accused of ignoring anyone who actually knows anything on a given subject in favor of ideological purity. Surprisingly, turns out to be untrue:

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

See? It's clear that the administration is willing to turn to experts for advice and when it comes to torture anyone would be wise to study the techniques used by brutal totalitarian regimes.

The chart also listed other techniques used by the Chinese, including “Semi-Starvation,” “Exploitation of Wounds,” and “Filthy, Infested Surroundings,” and with their effects: “Makes Victim Dependent on Interrogator,” “Weakens Mental and Physical Ability to Resist,” and “Reduces Prisoner to ‘Animal Level’ Concerns.”

The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: “Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.”

I have a problem with that last part; credit should always be given when credit is due. Indeed, by not revealing the source BushCo™ has opened itself up to plagiarism charges. But I digress.

At any rate, it's good to see that BushCheney has decided to listen to experts for once although there are those who are even more expert in interrogation techniques than the ChiComs. Like the Geheime Staatspolizei, for instance.

But it's a good start nonetheless.

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When Presidents Weren't Insane

Ike:

At a Cabinet meeting in mid-August 1958, as the threat of a Chinese blockade of Taiwan was developing, Air Force Gen. Nathan F. Twining, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained "that at the outset American planes would drop 10- to 15-kiloton bombs on selected fields in the vicinity of Amoy," a coastal city on the Taiwan Strait now called Xiamen, according to the documents.

But "the President simply did not accept the contention that nuclear weapons were as conventional as high explosives," according to the now-declassified Air Force history of the Taiwan crisis.

In releasing the official history, William Burr of George Washington University's National Security Archive said Eisenhower's decision forced Air Force leaders to think more seriously about conventional warfare instead of relying on nuclear arms.

[...]

When informed that Eisenhower had insisted that first strikes be made with high explosives, Gen. Laurence S. Kuter, the Pacific Air Forces commander, described "this idea of limited response as disastrous . . . and warned that the United States should either be ready to use its most effective weapons -- in his opinion nuclear bombs -- or stay out of the conflict," according to the history.

George & Dick:

Revelations that the Bush administration is developing new nuclear weapons to target Iraq, North Korea and others have been greeted with alarm as a radical departure from established U.S. policy.

In fairness:

A shift in this direction began in 1990 under Vice President Dick Cheney when he was secretary of defense, and was accelerated after the Persian Gulf War. By the mid-1990s the Pentagon already was working to integrate the possible use of nuclear weapons to respond to biological or chemical attacks.

The difference between the current administration and the previous one is that BushCo™ would probably love to lob a few teeny-tiny nukes.

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Ooopsie!

Oy:

Instead of sending helicopter batteries, the United States shipped four electrical fuses for Minuteman nuclear missile warheads to Taiwan, a mistake that was discovered only last week — a year and a half after the erroneous shipment, Pentagon officials disclosed on Tuesday.

Officials said the nose-cone fuses contained no nuclear material, and were similar in function to the ones used for conventional munitions, although these were designed specifically to send an electrical signal to the trigger of the MK-12 nuclear warhead as it was approaching the ground.

The Pentagon sure seems to have a problem with nuke-related things these days.

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St. Joseph's Baby Roofies

Uhhh...

U.S. safety officials have voluntarily recalled about 4.2 million Chinese-made Aqua Dots toys contaminated with a powerful "date rape" drug that has caused some children to vomit and lose consciousness upon ingesting the contents.

Scientists have found the highly popular holiday toy contains a chemical that, once metabolized, converts into the toxic "date rape" drug GHB (gamma-hydroxy butyrate), U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) spokesman Scott Wolfson told CNN.

CPSC spokescritter Julie Vallese suggests that anyone with these Aqua Dots should throw them out.

Gee, do ya think?

I know this is an unachievable dream but couldn't the relevant regulatory agencies, y'know, do their fucking jobs?

And what the hell is wrong with China?

Perhaps we should reexamine our trade relationship with that country.

Just a thought.

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Capitalism Murders

It's no secret that American investment money is pouring into China. And it should come as no surprise that American investment money is pouring into surveillance technology. Combine the two and you're talking investment gold:

Wall Street analysts now follow the growth of companies that install surveillance systems providing Chinese police stations with 24-hour video feeds from nearby Internet cafes. Hedge fund money from the United States has paid for the development of not just better video cameras, but face-recognition software and even newer behavior-recognition software designed to spot the beginnings of a street protest and notify police.

Now this practice is catching the attention of Capitol Hill, specifically the Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), who calls this “an absolutely incredible phenomenon of extreme corporate irresponsibility.”

One hedge fund director points out that New York City (among others) is installing surveillance cameras:

“Is New York a police state?” said Peter Siris, the managing director of Guerrilla Capital and Hua-Mei 21st Century, two Manhattan hedge funds that were among the earliest investors in China Security and Surveillance.

Well, Mr. Siris, I'd say that these cameras are a step towards a police state. But even if you discount that there's still a big difference: The US doesn't use those cameras to identify people, grab them, give them a brief sham trial, then put a bullet into the backs of their heads (so far as we know).

But none of this matters because there's money to be had. Yahoo, Google (motto: "Don't Be Evil"), and even Rupert Murdoch have all joined the gold rush. Where there's obscene amounts of money to be made morality can be discarded.

And besides, who cares about dead Chinese?

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Y'know...

...until the Chinese gets its shit together we ought to just ban their products. From toys to animal feed to toothpaste and beyond it's pretty clear that Chinese manufacturers don't have the ability or the desire to make safe products.

Ban them all.

Not that BushCo™ will ever do such a thing.

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...and baby's bottles and baby's bibs...

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That's One Way, I Suppose

China:

Moving to address mounting concerns about the safety of its exports, China announced Tuesday that it had executed the former head of its food and drug safety agency for accepting bribes in exchange for approving substandard medicines.

Here in the US we punish corrupt government officials with high-paying private sector jobs.

Perhaps we can find a happy medium? Prison, maybe?

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Pot Meet Kettle

George:

President George W. Bush on Tuesday criticized Russia and China on democracy, saying the United States would continue building relationships with those countries but without abandoning its values.

[...]

"In Russia, reforms that once promised to empower citizens have been derailed, with troubling implications for democratic development," Bush said.

He also criticized China for not doing more on the political front. "China's leaders believe that they can continue to open the nation's economy without also opening its political system," Bush said.

The absurdity of this is so apparent that only a George could miss it.

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Ummm...

...does anyone else think that the Chinese government is trying to slowly kill us?

Consumers have been warned to avoid any toothpaste made in China after inspectors found a poisonous chemical in toothpaste seized at the border and sold at two stores, U.S. health officials said on Friday.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began scrutinizing toothpaste imported from China last week after similar products in Latin America were found to contain diethylene glycol, or DEG, often found in solvents and antifreeze.

Spocko has been all over the pet food angle but I have to wonder...

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Banned In China

I don't know whether to be proud or appalled.

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Shut Up

James Fallows:

What is clear is that the worst-positioned person to scold China about its behavior is the one who just did: Vice President Dick Cheney. In his speech yesterday in Australia, the Vice President helpfully observed that the satellite test, plus the buildup of China's military (with a budget still a tiny fraction of America's) was "not consistent with China's stated goal of a peaceful rise."

[...]

Dear Mr. Vice President: there may be valuable things you can do. But telling anyone else how to cultivate a peaceful image is not one of them. Go home, and shut up.

Unhinged Dick has to go.

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Hypocrites

The final frontier:

The Chinese military shot down one of its own aging satellites with a ground-based ballistic missile last week, demonstrating a new technological capability at a time of growing Bush administration concern over Beijing's military modernization and its intentions in space.

[...]

"The United States believes China's development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of cooperation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area," said Gordon D. Johndroe, spokesman for the National Security Council. "We and other countries have expressed our concern to the Chinese."

[...]

Concerns about rising threats to U.S. satellites led the Bush administration to issue a new national space policy in August, which held that the U.S. viewed freedom of action in space as important as air or sea power.

The administration was widely criticized for its aggressive attitude toward defense activities in space. But a White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Thursday that satellites and access to space were considered vital to U.S. national and economic security and that any event "that can hinder passage through space" was of concern.

Indeed:

The Space Command plans to use its satellite-and-computer network not only for guiding these earth-based weapons, but to destroy enemy satellites. They call it "full-spectrum dominance." They say it will "protect U.S. interests and investments." There's nothing secret about their plan. They shout it out in glossy brochures and slick websites, hoping to get a bigger piece of the budgetary pie. Bush’s nomination of Rumsfeld indicates that the new administration wants to cut the pie very much to the Space Command’s liking.

Apparently, the Administration expected every other country to say, "Okay, develop your space weapons and we'll just sit quietly over here."

It doesn't work that way.

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