another week closer to the eschaton…

My Guantánamo Nightmare – Lakhdar Boumediene was a childrens’ humanitarian aid worker with the red crescent until the united states government decided that he was a terrorist, kidnapped him, and held him in gitmo, where he was tortured for seven years until somebody noticed and he was released… and that was before the president signed the law allowing such things. last week i posted about some OWS protesters who were arrested for speaking in public… i wonder what happened to them? 😐

Free Speech Is On Thin Ice and Critical Thinking Is Unpatriotic

When they took the fourth amendment,
    I was quiet because I didn’t deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment,
    I was quiet because I was innocent.
When they took the second amendment,
    I was quiet because I didn’t own a gun.
Now they’ve taken the first amendment,
    and I can say nothing about it.

… but that will not stop me from saying stuff about it anyway! 😛

Doomsday Clock Moves 1 minute closer to midnight – “Two years ago, it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats that we face. In many cases, that trend has not continued or been reversed.”

Grow Up, Ron Paul – as much as i like his libertarian take on cannabis, i have too much concern for people and the environment to treat him as a serious contender for president.

Ten Years At Guantánamo Bay By The Numbers – and it doesn’t look like it’s going to close any time soon, thanks to the people who promised to close it deciding not to anyway… 😐

Santorum Supports Accused Child Molester Sandusky – and this guy wants to be our president?

Homeland Security monitors journalists – hello clown-land security goons… i am a terrorist! 😐 Anarchy is America’s solution

While U.S., Afghans, NATO Condemn Marines Urinating On Dead Taliban, Right Wing Says ‘I Could Care Less’ – my guess is that it’s going to get an awful lot worse before it starts to get better again… probably not within my lifetime, and likely not within my son’s lifetime… 😐

however, i want to examine the word desecration a little more closely. according to the dictionary definition, to “desecrate” something is to “divest it of its sacred or hallowed character or office”. the people on whom the marines were urinating, according to the video, were “dead taliban”, although it’s not clear whether they were actual taliban fighters, or dead civilians that were caught in the crossfire, but either way, were they doing something – other than being human – that would have meant that most people would consider their behaviour “sacred or hallowed”? and if they were, actual, taliban fighters, who, presumably moments previously, were trying to kill those marines, would their behaviour still be considered “sacred or hallowed”? probably not, but the geneva convention prohibits “the desecration of bodies of people killed in war” so if their behaviour wasn’t sacred, at least according to the “people who make the rules”, then the only remaining thing that could have been sacred about them was the fact that they were human. exactly the SAME KIND of human that were the marines who were desecrating their bodies.

let me see if i’ve got this straight: human beings are sacred, but the geneva convention prohibits the desecrating of people who have been killed in war… so the geneva convention doesn’t make human beings so sacred that it’s not okay to kill them – which, if the human being is sacred, would be the ultimate desecration… in other words, only DEAD people are sacred… before they die, they’re free game, but once they’re dead, you DON’T TOUCH their bodies without respect for the divine…

something is seriously fucked up with the society that would make this kind of rule, and think that they made war “okay” because they have rules like this. 😛

Dumb As A Rock: You Will Be Absolutely Amazed At The Things That U.S. High School Students Do Not Know – perhaps this is why we’re plunging headlong towards the eschaton… it certainly isn’t slowing us down any.

The Greatest Truth Never Told – this guy is saying pretty much exactly the same thing that i’ve been saying for years… maybe someone will pay attention to him.

Google, what were you thinking? – this is the reason i’m suspicious, to say the least, about anything having to do with google. to me, a company whose motto is “do no evil” deserves watching a bit more closely than other companies, and this is exactly the reason why.