These sorry sons of bitches: In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Inquiry Into Past Use.

I think this article may upset me more than the graphic details of the actual interrogation. (And that’s saying something). This is either insanely gross incompetence, at the level of Cabinet members and the leaders of Congress, or blatent willful ignorance of the facts to avoid responsibility. This article is just chock full of crazy:

According to several former top officials involved in the discussions seven years ago, they did not know that the military training program, called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, had been created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans.

The top officials [Tenet] briefed did not learn that waterboarding had been prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II and was a well-documented favorite of despotic governments since the Spanish Inquisition; one waterboard used under Pol Pot was even on display at the genocide museum in Cambodia.

Pardon my French, but…come the fuck ON. Are you serious…this is your defense?? AAhh…they had blowed us up! We waz scared! How were we to know this stuff was bad? Hell, I was a goddamn NROTC midshipman and I knew that SERE training was based on Korean War torture techniques. That was the whole POINT.

It’s time for somebody to go to jail. We tortured people. We tortured people because we could, and we didn’t really think of them as human beings, and we were looking for vengeance. Same reasons as anybody who tortures people, really. And now we’re pulling the but everything happened so fast card.

That’s exactly why people with sense were telling you to slow down before you did something stupid. And instead, you’re going to try to excuse your actions by emphasizing your incompetence. It’s time for the people making those decisions to take responsibility. (and don’t start with me on Cheney’s eh, it worked, so shut up about it argument).

Obama’s no prosecution vow meets resistance

To say I’m disappointed in this decision is an understatement.

This is a time for reflection, not retribution, President Obama said. No, this is a time for accountability, not for ducking the issue by wrapping oneself in the flag. If we are not a nation of laws, then that flag doesn’t matter much anyway. *sigh*

As usual, the ACLU is doing outstanding work here. They have been one of the organizations working to get the legal memos released that the Bush administration used to justify torture. In appreciation of all their efforts, and on the advice of an old friend that it’s best to respond constructively to situations like this, I’ve made an additional donation to the ACLU today. A birthday present to myself, and a gift intended to support the freedoms of all of us.

I also encourage you to join me in demanding the appointment of a special prosecutor; watch this short video and join me in demanding accountability.

Let’s stand for the rule of law, not of men. Let’s stand for the idea that torture is wrong, period.

So…found the the Kauffman Foundation Multimedia site via I, Cringely; there looks to be quiite a bit of fairly nifty video there. So much, in fact, that I’ll never see it.

It’s all video, even though much of it appears to be talking head-style interviews, and it’s all only hosted here, via magic clicks off of a single landing page (though at least they do have link and embed codes available for single videos). Seriously, folks…I see no RSS feeds, no audio podcasts, no YouTube or blip.tv channel. Audio is tough enough to manage on the Internet; not that I don’t go to sites and watch video if I’m really motivated, but it’s competing with a LOT of other stuff.

Why not an audio only option, with a podcast feed? At first glance, these programs appear to be very usable only as audio, and with a podcast feed, I could just throw in the my podcatcher and it would show up (like similar audio from fora.tv, the LSE, and C-SPAN already does). And not that the video isn’t nice, but I’d suggest either picking one of the big boys for distribution, like YouTube or fora.tv; or use a service like blip.tv, which would let you brand/skin your player and URLs, but still give automagic RSS feeds, commenting capabilities, etc. Or do both! Have your own site, but copy it around as well.

Too many places do this. In their zeal to control their message, they limit it to practically no one. Video in particular is vulnerable to this, as it not nearly as amenable to background multi-tasking. I have to search out video, and mostly pay attention directly to it. There are only a limited number of places that is going to happen. www.kauffman.org/KauffmanMultimedia.aspx is not one of them.

Sorry, Kauffman Foundation…I probably won’t see much of this material. Bummer.

I love Bruce Sterling. At first glance, he just throws things at the wall to see what sticks; but there’s really a LOT more going on than that. Sterling groks this stuff…his comments are usually deeply relevant about 4 steps ahead of the pack. For example (excerpt from Wired Gadget article, then commented on (((like this))) by Bruce:

The Electronic-Book “Readers” Who Refuse To Sit Still As an “Audience”

For the last few days, O’Brien has spent a few minutes every day in the Kindle book store tagging the more expensive digital books with the ‘9 99 boycott’ tag and removing it once the price drops below the threshold. (((Why not .99 cents, or, even, get paid to read the book. I fail to see why a 9.99 price point is remotely stable — especially if, thanks to electronic global financing, the *currency itself* is radically destabilized.)))

Hell. Yes. This is the meat of the matter, and few people seem to get it. These prices for digital versions of physical products are presently COMPLETELY divorced from Real Reality, because they’re joined at the hip to the faux world where they’re just like the real product, but DIGITAL, like that’s some magic phrase. These are products with no distribution cost, folks. (spare me the hand-waving requirement of fractional cents, especially when we’re talking non-video, today. And that’ll get taken care of soon enough.) It’s not what it costs, it’s what it’s worth, and what it’s worth is related to the size of your audience, which is related to your availability, which is related to what it costs…headspin time. I’m not (necessarily) saying it should be free…but picking $9.99 out of the ether like it has a basis is not sustainable, in my opinion.

Thanks, Bruce. Keep ’em coming.

Wow…I was completely blown away today (in a good way) when an online buddy, Paul Reynolds, nominated me out of the blue for Nicest Guy on FriendFeed! Thanks, Paul!

Who’da thunk?? I don’t have world’s greatest reputation for Mr. Nice Guy at work, for example. I’m a production support database administrator, and I can be…um…kind of difficult. At times. Occasionally. (Especially if I haven’t had enough caffeine…don’t bug me first thing.)

I think it’s quite instructive to explore the different facets of one’s personality as seen by different groups. You have work, home, friends, how you act with strangers, by yourself vs. in a group, etc. My purely online face isn’t something that I’ve really thought about before…it’s interesting (and flattering) to hear that at least one person thinks that I’m consistently positive and constructive!

I’d definitely like to drag that packet of behaviors into work a bit more. Of course, one carries all the baggage of past experiences, bad karma, blown tempers, etc. in a persistent environment like that (I’ve worked at the same place for a decade now), but I’ve tried over the past few years to be more encouraging and positive about things in general. It appears that it’s working! Paul, I plan to remember your extremely generous comment whenever I’m beating myself up or being too hard on myself. Again, thanks very much.

With some level of hype, FriendFeed unveiled their new design today; you can check it out at http://beta.friendfeed.com. Ugh.

I was already taking a step back from constantly keeping up to date with statuses there; last week, Dave Slusher made a great observation that I wholeheartedly agree with…we all should spend less time adding value to other services (like Twitter, FF, FB, etc.) and more time on our own sites, podcasts, etc. as well as directly at sites that we enjoy. So I’ve spent a happy week catching up on posts at postings at places I really dig (like Dave’s site, Charlie’s Diary, Jon Udell’s blog, etc.) and not worried so much about the meta-meta talk at FriendFeed.

This latest update, assuming it reaches the standard site in anything like it’s present form, would go a long way toward killing the site’s remaining usefulness for me. I’m not there to watch excitedly as twee…er, posts from 1,000 random C-level celebs float by; FF did at least allow me to keep track of relatively complex conversations about a post. Now, the comments on a post increase without even pushing that stream to the top, which basically kills any usefulness to me that the site would have.

I’m not planning on removing my account or anything, and I might muck about it enough to at least tell when someone is trying to talk to me. But I’m SERIOUSLY not impressed, and I think that this design is deeply flawed. That being said, it very well might succeed, as it’s enough like twitter that they may catch some of the twitter hype (which IMO is pretty obviously what this is intended to do), but it’s 100% FAIL from my standpoint.