Clueless

Apparently, the Bush family has been so involved with the rescue efforts following Katrina, that poor Laura actually forgot the hurricane’s name. The world is impressed by such compassion! But seriously, I'm shattered... I actually thought that George was the only Neanderthal in the family....

Happy Birthday Mencken

"Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority… All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant…."

Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
Minority Report, 1956

Rich white folks

Would the Bush administration have reacted quicker, if Katrina had hit Uptown Manhattan?

The "implicit world" of human mind

I've been out of town for a few days. Nothing fancy... just been spending long days inside a cold conference hall, listening to long presentations. The conference was about "implicit cognition". For now, let's say it means unconscious thoughts and attitudes. It seems that I can't focus my attention to anything else than "implicit cognitions", so I first thought of writing something short about the subject. Later I reconsidered, cause I'm not really in the mood for that. But here is a very interesting link to "Project Implicit", set up by Harvard University. On their website, you can find a demonstration of an association test that can give an estimate of your "unconscious" attitudes towards different stuff.

British interpretation of human rights

According to The Guardian, the UK home secretary, Charles Clarke, had said earlier this month that he would deport foreign nationals whose presence was "not conducive to the public good", despite concerns that they might be tortured overseas. I guess he means people whose presence in the UK could promote terrorist acts.

Very well… but what happened to the human rights, if they ever existed? I thought “criminals” too should be protected by human rights regulations. It has been provided by the European Convention on Human Rights (article 3) that “no one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. The applicability of this article to cases of extradition and deportation has been repeatedly manifested in decisions of the European Court on Human Rights (see for example the case of Soering vs. the United Kingdom). The prohibition provided by this article is absolute. It permits no justification or limitation and cannot be derogated under Article 15 of the European Convention on Human Rights even in times of war or other public emergency threatening the life of the nation.

Beside the European Convention on Human Rights, there are other international treaties (i.e., The Geneva Convention and the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment) which expressly and specifically address the question of sending individuals to a country where they will be exposed to the risk of prohibited treatment.

I guess human rights are important only when they justify invading another country. What was it called? Iraqi freedom….

P.s. Some info discussed above is adapted from a paper by Nuala Mole.

Sean Penn in Iran

Prior to the presidential elections in June, Sean Penn has been in Tehran for a few days, doing a series of reports for San Francisco Chronicle. The Chronicle will publish this five-day series in sequence. The reports of the first two days of Penn’s visit is now available online.

I read his first report. Although Penn gives a rather shallow and at times one-dimensional description of Iran’s political and social circumstances, it can be an interesting account, especially for non-Iranians or Iranians who have lost track of all the social changes during the last 15 years. Note that Penn, in his main observations, might have been led by a top-down process, meaning that he wanted to have a certain story and he has sought places and circumstances that could validate his original account. I will comment on his other reports later.

Day one: discovering a culture in conflict
Day two: meeting with the son of a former president

Keep them happy

This is what Fox News, a.k.a. RPN (Republican Propaganda Network) had to say about Bush's speech before members of the National Guard today.

“Bush also thanked the families of American service men and women in times of heavy sacrifice…. The families are standing for America and America appreciates the service and the sacrifice of the military families," he said. "There are few things more difficult than seeing a loved one go to war."

I guess we’re all used to this sort of nonsense by political leaders in times of great problems. Every person with an ounce of gray material in his head knows that the real purpose behind this speech is not to “thank” the military families. The real objective is to keep people calm, to let them believe that the death of their sons and daughters really does contribute to their own freedom and democracy (I still can’t figure out how Bush and co. came up with this equation…). Surely, the current administration doesn’t want to have another Vietnam. Therefore, the government desperately tries to convince its people of the political, moral and security aspect of its operation in Iraq. We have already witnessed how the administration has navigated through different “reasons” for war, from self-protection to freeing Iraqi people and back again. But apparently this type of deception is not enough; the American people should not see and hear certain information either. For instance, it is not allowed to film coffins, containing dead bodies of American soldiers, when arriving in the U.S. Also, current American casualties in Afghanistan are being systematically concealed. Although the country has had a quasi-election, just prior to the US’s, the situation in Afghanistan has not changed significantly. The security is almost non-existent in large parts of the country. Even in Kabul, the “allies” have not succeeded in creating an acceptable level of security. As a matter of fact the situation in Afghanistan is so terrible, that Doctors without Borders announced to pull out its personnel from the country due to security problems. Note that the organization had been active in Afghanistan for a long time even during the reign of the Taliban and war with the Northern opposition.

These families deserve the truth, not some lame words of “gratitude”.