Thursday, April 27, 2006

To Condone and Tolerate Torture

Today, multiple news outlets reported that investigators for the European Union reported that the CIA broke EU law 1000+ times since 2001 by flying unregistered aircraft through European airspace with terror suspects on board.  Some of the suspects were kidnapped from EU nations and some were being “rendered” to other nations where terrorism is practiced.  (see these articles:  NYTimes, NPR, and BBC)

What I found very interesting, from a linguistics perspective, is the following statement from CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano: “The C.I.A does not condone or tolerate torture, transport individuals to other countries for the purpose of torture or knowingly receive intelligence obtained by torture.”

If we assume that he’s being honest (a BIG assumption, given he’s employed by the CIA, admittedly), then can the CIA still be torturing people given Mr. Gimigliano’s statement?  Absolutely.

First, let’s look at the word “condone.”

condone

1.  to pardon or overlook voluntarily; especially : to treat as if trivial, harmless, or of no importance (source: http://www.m-w.com)

2. to overlook, forgive, or disregard (an offense) without protest or censure. (sources:  http://www.dictionary.com and the American Heritage Dictionary)

So, the CIA doesn’t condone torture.  Fair enough.  But if you take the language literally, not condoning torture doesn’t restrict the behavior of torturing someone in any way.  After all, torture is undoubtedly treated very seriously and as very important by anyone in the CIA responsible for torturing terrorism suspects.  And I suspect that torture isn’t ever overlooked or disregarded by the CIA, since torture is a notoriously unreliable way to get information.  And I suspect that the CIA censures strongly anyone who tortures a suspect for no good reason.

And all of this is true without ever having to lie about condoning torture.  CIA agents could KNOW that people are being tortured, be hooked up to a lie detector, and honestly say that the CIA doesn’t “condone” torture because the precise, legalistic definition of the word lets them off the hook.  Just as a CIA agent could claim that the agency doesn’t “condone” assassination, yet there are documented examples of CIA assassinations (and anyone who thinks that the CIA doesn’t kill people for the U.S. government is very naïve).

Now, let’s look at the word “tolerate.”

tolerate

1a to suffer to be or to be done without prohibition, hindrance, or contradiction b : to put up with (source: http://www.m-w.com)

2. To allow without prohibiting or opposing; permit. (source:  http://www.dictionary.com)

This word is even more slippery than “condone.” After all, if the CIA officially has a policy (which I’m sure it does) that prohibits and opposes torture, then, in a precise, legalistic fashion, the CIA doesn’t tolerate torture.

But more importantly, if the CIA’s internal definition of torture is significantly broader than the United Nation’s definition, or even the State Department’s or federal law’s definitions, then you don’t even have to be slippery – the CIA doesn’t tolerate OR condone torture, because by the CIA’s definition, nothing it does even qualifies AS torture.

As for the part about rendering people to other countries for the purpose of torture, it’s remarkably easy to say, honestly, that the CIA never transports people to countries in order to have the people tortured.  But if you know that the country you’re rendering your suspected terrorist to has used torture in the past, you can be reasonably sure that your transportee will be tortured on arrival.  You rendered the suspect with the purpose of getting the suspect out of the U.S. and into allied hands.  The torture “just sorta happened” after you turned over your suspect.

As I’ve said many times before, language is power.  And in this case, the CIA has harnessed the power of language to honestly claim that they neither condone nor tolerate torture, that they don’t transport terror suspects to other nations with the purpose of torturing the suspects, and to hide an ugly fact behind a statement that is literally and precisely honest but still broadly a falsehood.

[crossposted to the 5th Estate]

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

The Micro-Pundit:  Clean and Safe Energy Coalition

I am a pro-nuclear environmentalist, and have been since I researched nuclear power in junior high school.  And now, a NYTimes article reports that Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, and former EPA administrator Christie Whitman have been hired by the nuclear industry to be the spokespeople for the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition.  This new organization is fully funded by the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group of nuclear energy companies who are making the point that nuclear energy is safe and will probably be the best option for providing clean energy until renewables are cheap enough to be truly viable.

Now, while I agree in principle, there are problems with nuclear.  The waste storage solutions currently envisioned aren’t ideal for a variety of reasons (not the least of which is the NIMBY factor).  Nuclear fuel isn’t a long-term solution unless we get over our national squeamishness about building breeder reactors (which use fission “wastes” like plutonium to generate more heat and more fissionable materials).  And, quite frankly, having 20 or more companies each designing their own “ideal” reactor is about a dumb as it gets – standardization on a proven design is the best approach (which is part of why you don’t hear about nuclear accidents in France or Japan, both of which use standardized nuclear plant designs).  Ultimately, we’ll need to figure out a way to power our global civilization with a reasonable fraction of the energy that currently falls on the surface of the planet in the form of sunlight.  But until then, nuclear is probably the least objectionable option.

I’m considering joining the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition as an individual member.  That decision will be made after I’ve looked over the website a little more closely to make sure I don’t have major objections to the group’s positions.  I hope I don’t find any issues, because I believe that nuclear is really the way of the future, for at least the next 20-50 years.

[Crossposted to The 5th Estate]

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

The Miscreant’s Dictionary:  “Lobbiest”

lobbiest

a person who uses the Constitutional right to petition the goverment to manipulate the system in favor of people and corporations who already have too much at the cost of people and corporations who have too little.

Posted by angliss on 04/25 at 07:18 PM
Language • The Miscreant's Dictionary • I-L • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Monday, April 24, 2006

The Micro-Pundit:  Marc Holtzman Campaign Donors

According to an article in today’s Denver Post, Colorado GOP gubernatorial candidate Marc Holtzman has raised $712,000 of his total $1.36 million campaign fund.  If you do the math, this means that over 52% of Holtzman’s money was raised from OUTSIDE the state of Colorado.  Now, maybe it’s just me, but it seems to me that, if you’re running for a state office, you should actually raise the vast majority of your money from the very people you’re being elected to represent.  Bob Beauprez (the other GOP candidate and current Colorado Congressman) has raised only 9% of his total $1.7 million from out-of-state donors and Democratic candidate Bill Ritter has raised only 4.3% of his total $1.1 million from out-of-state donors.

A spokesman for Holtzman’s campaign complained that Colorado’s donor limits were so strict that campaigns had to go out of state to make enough money to campaign effectively.  Oh, boo-hoo, poor little Marc.  You know, if you can’t make enough money in the state your campaigning in to run an effective campaign, then maybe that should tell you a couple of things, like maybe you’re out of touch with the voters, or maybe your own party thinks you’re a loser.  In either of those cases, if you still want to run, go for it – just don’t whine about Colorado’s campaign finance laws being the problem.

Sunday, April 23, 2006

The Daily Mantra:  Sleep Deprivation

Always remember that bladder compression prepares soon-to-be mommies for sleep deprivation caused by the newborn requirements of diaper changes and feedings.  Daddies get no such advance preparation.

Monday, April 17, 2006

The Micro-Pundit:  Protests, Funeral, and the Westboro Baptist Church

"Thank God for Dead Soldiers.” “Thank God for I.E.D.’s.” “God Hates Gays.” “God Hates the U.S.A.” And most telling of all, “God is punishing this nation with a grievous, smiting blow, killing our children, sending them home dead, to help you connect the dots.  This is a nation that has forgotten God and leads a filthy manner of life,” from Shirley Roper-Phelps, spokesperson for the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, and daughter of Rev. Fred Phelps.

Yes, this is the same group that came to prominence by protesting the funeral of Matthew Sheppard, the gay University of Wyoming student who was beaten and tied to a fence by two anti-gay men near Laramie, Wyoming in 1998.  They’re the same people who work with Christian Identity anti-Semites to protest various Holocaust Memorials.  They also went to the World Trade Center ruin and denounced the rescuers and told them to leave the still living victims to die in the rubble.  And he’d rather let child molesters and murderers adopt than a gay parent.
This is disgusting.  But they have the right to say these things, as the First Amendment guarantees.  But other people also have the right NOT to be subjected to this crap, which is why I like the recent legislation mentioned in today’s NYTimes article, Outrage at Funeral Protests Pushes Lawmakers to Act.  Many states are requiring that funeral protestors be various distances away from the funeral proceedings.  These laws are based on the laws requiring a minimum of 150 feet (or 300, depending on the state) between anti-abortion protestors and the homes of abortion providers, and the Supreme Court approved this as a reasonable limit on free speech.

There are times I love the fact that the Supreme Court has accepted the idea of an evolving Constitution, because there should be limits on speech some times, and in-my-not-even-remotely-dreaming-about-considering-being-even-slightly-humble opinion, this is one of those times.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

“Outsourcing” Drive-Through Orders

I came across this link about McDonalds using call centers in one state to handle drive-through orders from hundreds or even thousands of miles away.  Very interesting article.  As the article says, “When the customer pulls away from the menu to pay for the food and pick it up, it takes around 10 seconds for another car to pull forward. During that time, Mr. King said, his order-takers can be answering a call from a different McDonald’s where someone has already pulled up.”

In one way, this is a fantastic idea.  After all, those 10 seconds enable the call center to increase the productivity of the drive-through employee significantly.  And with some moderately sophisticated software, the call-center employee taking orders could answer a phone from Hawaii, then another from Deluth, followed by one from Seattle, and then back to Hawaii again, but three cars later than the first order.  Very impressive, and it could save McDonald’s millions of dollars.

But I don’t really agree with the business sentiment this change represents.  It’s yet another step down the long road away from customer service with a personal touch (if such a thing could really be said about drive-through windows) toward the impersonal.  Sure, if it really does improve customer service and my wife is more likely to get her cheeseburger without onions, then that’s a good thing, but it still bugs me.

The other reason this bugs me is because companies like McDonald’s are, for better or worse, significant employers of both teenagers and disadvantaged adults.  And this version of outsourcing gives the corporation the ability to send one or two employees out of every McDonald’s away from “expensive” local labor markets to places where labor is cheap.  And in so doing, these admittedly low-paying service jobs will evaporate, and with them will go some of the opportunities for teenagers to learn valuable lessons and for disadvantaged adults to get their economic feet under themselves.

Google’s corporate motto, official or unofficial, is “Don’t be evil.” And while McDonald’s isn’t yet entering into the realm of evil with these pilot programs, there comes a point where economic productivity must take a back seat to corporate ethics.  You know, outdated concepts like the idea that corporations have a responsibility to their employees as much as to their shareholders, or the idea that employees are more than “resources” to be acquired and discarded. 

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

The Daily Mantra:  Employed Bloggers

Murphy’s Law of Employed Bloggers:  When you finally decide that you’ve taken a long enough break from blogging and that you want to get back to daily blogs is when work will go so crazy that you’ll be unable to blog.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

The Daily Mantra:  Ego Deflating

Apologies are a great way to deflate your own ego, especially when it was your own inflated ego that caused the problem in the first place.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Gold Nanoparticles Detect Toxins and Pathogens

Today, I read about yet another cool application of nanotechnology.  If you don’t know about nanotech, it basically boils down to doing new and unusual things with very small molecules, particles, and, possibly, mechanisms.  Today’s new nanotech goodie was using sugar-coated gold particles to detect pathogens and toxins (e.g. lead, arsenic, the poison ricin, etc.).  According to this BBC article, when all the manufacturing details are worked out, the new technology could be used to almost instantly detect the compound/pathogen that it’s been designed to detect.  Apparently, the gold particles are bright red normally, but turn blue if the target compound or pathogen are present in the air, water, or on the surface.  And the detection method detects quantities that are well below the presently acceptable danger thresholds.

Cool stuff, and way more useful than nanoparticles of titanium used to make whiter paint.

(Other blogs about nanotech in various forms:  Nanotech and Cancer and Richard E. Smalley: 1943-2005)