I followed a link from the Military.com newsletter to an article about an award-winning AP photographer from Iraq who's been 'detained' and imprisoned without charges for 19 months.
After reading the article I went to check out the comments (Join the Discussion) and was disturbed and disgusted by what I read.
(Because the URL is so long for the comments/discussion page here's a shortened URL http://tinyurl.com/295q3o .)
I suggest you read the article, then the comments, and judge for yourself...
Here are some examples from the "discussion":
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"I can't believe it took us this long to capture him. Doesn't surprise me at all."
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"Just an AP photographer? Hell, I think nearly the whole lot at AP is a cheering section for the terrorists."
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quote:
Originally posted by 67NOV:
Just an AP photographer? Hell, I think nearly the whole lot at AP is a cheering section for the terrorists.
"You and me both Sir."
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"Michelle Malkin has links to the pictures he's taken... all of insurgent activity, apparently without any fear on his part. If he isn't collaborating with them I'll eat my hat."
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"About time the military starts investigating all of this so called "journalists"
First AP,next CNN and finally Aljazeera "
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"Well, I've been wrong before, but I think burying this turd in a holr with his head sticking up and letting locals stone the head would probably be a good idea. I'm just old-fashioned like that."
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"Well, when you serve, maybe you'll think differently about those who are Terrorists. Enjoy being Protected by others"
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- And when someone posted a dissenting view, here's what some wrote:
"Actually, What is laughable,... no it's more like pathetic is all the clueless mouth diarrhea from liberals on this site."
-------------------------------------------- Followed by:
"LMAO, good show, sir. I will buy you a beer for that one. BeerGulp, ahhh.....the beer is nice and cold."
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"A corporation will stand behind it's employee regardless of the scurrilousness of the employee only to protect their own image.
We probably have tons of terrorists who have infiltrated many businesses in the U.S. ready to strike. Many others have lawn services.
I am sure the U.S. military wouldn't make these claims without substantial evidence. Of course he is probably photographing military operations and smuggling it to the insurgency in his nose. Can you imagine how many volumes of micro file you can stuff in that jobaruby?
Yikes so that is where all the air is going."
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"GEEEEEEEZ! The article states they're going to turn the AP photographer guy over to the Iraq authorities in a few days, so what are all these libs crying about!
Remember, that AP photographer isn't an American and isn't in the USA, he's in a foreign country. Things work differently over there and when under arrest you don't have any rights over there. So if they want to lock the guy up and never let him out, shut him up, or torture him to with in an inch of his life to find out what he knows....... well, that's just how it goes. That's how they do it over there. The guy is a terrorist and his efforts have no doubt cost others their lives, so......... this guy is getting what he deserves, whether you agree with it or not."
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- There's more, but that's enough to give you the general flavor. As I said, only one person showed any sense of decency (and respect for the rule of law) and supported the AP photographer.
The feeling I got when reading these comments was that they could have been written by those who committed the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. The absolute lack of humanity and the disregard for human rights goes against what I thought the US military stood for and has spent blood protecting.
I have to wonder how prevalent is this ignorant and malevolent attitude in our servicemen and women?
Is this some of what you get when you send people to fight and die in an asymmetric war?
Is it what happens to soldiers when they see their comrades get blown up daily by fighters who look just like the ones they're there to protect?
Does it come from bad leadership?
Just where in hell do these comments come from?
Friday, November 23, 2007
C|NET - Download.com -- Are you confused?
This is what happens when I (successfully?) log in to Download.com.
As you can see, I'm logged in and it displayed my user name
(Welcome back, "trdaggett"). And if you look at the bottom it also says "Sorry, the identifier/password combination you've entered is invalid.".
I just sent another issue 'comment' to CNET about the ongoing login issues. I've been registered with CNET and ZDNet for years, and it seems like nearly every time I go to log in something like this happens. They don't screw up my email
address though, I get everything I've signed up for.
After I finished sending the support comment, it presented me with a page that went something like this; 'We think you requested information on Limewire...'.
I wish I'd taken a screenshot of it. It obviously parsed my comment and made a guess as to the content....badly. Nowhere did I mention Limewire or anything remotely similar.
In the second screen grab you see it shows all the different requests that "NoScript" detected.
For those who don't know about it NoScript is a
Firefox 'extension' that blocks Java scripting in web pages until I 'allow' it. It's perhaps the most valuable add-on available and protects me from malicious scripting exploits. Everyone should use it unless you're a security freak and are using another method.
The author Giorgio Maone is to be congratulated and deserves all the donations we can send!
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Now back to CNET, I don't know what causes this/these issues, I'm thinking that it might have something to do with all the different scripts running on their pages, and all the different browsers and combinations of security ware and add-ons people use. But it's not like I'm using an obscure browser or shouldn't be using an excellent security extension like NoScript.
Obviously something is screwed up, and usually the more things you have going on inside a web page, the better the chance for conflicts.
As an end-user, I don't care. All I want is a web page that works. And guess what happens if an end-user has trouble every time they try to log in? -- Adios until you get it straight.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Have a Happy Thanksgiving, But...
But, remember the indigenous peoples who don't share the same feelings. Their experience was entirely different from the English settlers. For one group it was the beginning, the other the beginning of the end.
I have mixed feelings about the day as my family was to follow these pilgrims path in 1630 when the Winthrop Fleet brought them to the shores of Massachusetts. I hate to think that Daggetts or Purintons (or any settlers for that matter) were in any part responsible for the downfall and destruction of the local tribes' way of life. Of course they were, in the most basic sense by being part of a group of people who thought that they had a right to 'settle' on someone else's land. I'd like to think that they were at least cognizant of that fact, and were possibly ones who at least tried to have a mutually beneficial relationship.
These days those issues aren't what most people think about on Thanksgiving day. Come to think of it, on the original Thanksgiving most were thinking of themselves and the fortunes of their group and little of the people whose lives and lands they would eventually dispossess.
This Thanksgiving while we are giving thanks for family and friends, the bountiful feast, and the fellowship of the day, it would be good to give some thought to those whose lives were irrevocably changed by our forefathers. I certainly will.
I have mixed feelings about the day as my family was to follow these pilgrims path in 1630 when the Winthrop Fleet brought them to the shores of Massachusetts. I hate to think that Daggetts or Purintons (or any settlers for that matter) were in any part responsible for the downfall and destruction of the local tribes' way of life. Of course they were, in the most basic sense by being part of a group of people who thought that they had a right to 'settle' on someone else's land. I'd like to think that they were at least cognizant of that fact, and were possibly ones who at least tried to have a mutually beneficial relationship.
These days those issues aren't what most people think about on Thanksgiving day. Come to think of it, on the original Thanksgiving most were thinking of themselves and the fortunes of their group and little of the people whose lives and lands they would eventually dispossess.
This Thanksgiving while we are giving thanks for family and friends, the bountiful feast, and the fellowship of the day, it would be good to give some thought to those whose lives were irrevocably changed by our forefathers. I certainly will.
Monday, November 12, 2007
The News From A True Citizen Journalist In Iraq
When I hear talking heads commenting on how the surge is working, and how the media isn't covering any of the good news from 'Eye-rack' (what the hell is so hard to pronounce?), my head wants to explode in frustration. So desperate to be vindicated in some way for their support of this devastating war, yet unable to produce any tangible (and believable) evidence themselves, they continue to live in a bubble of denial.
I wonder how they'd feel if they had to live in Iraq (outside the Green Zone), or if they were the manager of this clinic cited in a book by Dahr Jamail called "Beyond the Green Zone - Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq" that I just read about over at Firedoglake:
"The boxes of medical supplies we brought into the clinic were torn open immediately by desperate doctors. A woman entered, slapping her chest and face, and wailing as her husband carried in the dying body of her little boy. Blood was trickling off one of his arms, which dangled out of his father’s arms. Thus began my witnessing of an endless stream of women and children who had been shot by the U.S. soldiers and were now being raced into the dirty clinic, the cars speeding over the curb out front, and weeping family members carriying in their wounded."
"Standing near the ambulance in frustration, Maki [the manager of the clinic] told us, They (U.S. soldiers) shot the ambulance and they shot the driver after they checked his car, and knew he was carrying nothing. Then they shot him. And then they shot the ambulance. And now I have no ambulance to evacuate more than twenty wounded people.[...]"
Gee, I didn't hear about this on the news either.
Those have to be some thick bubbles these people are hiding in.
Lets make two lists, one with the 'good' news, the other with the bad. If you survive to complete the first part you'll already have a jump on the second.
And a large part of it depends on your perspective. How much good news do you have to report if you're one of the 2+ million displaced Iraqis? Probably more than if you're still living in Baghdad. How much good news do you think Maki has to report?
It seems that the only ones reporting "good news" are the officers who still support Bush, or the ones that know from experience that anything other than good news will put you on the fast track to "retirement". Oh, and Fox'ers.
I wonder how they'd feel if they had to live in Iraq (outside the Green Zone), or if they were the manager of this clinic cited in a book by Dahr Jamail called "Beyond the Green Zone - Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq" that I just read about over at Firedoglake:
"The boxes of medical supplies we brought into the clinic were torn open immediately by desperate doctors. A woman entered, slapping her chest and face, and wailing as her husband carried in the dying body of her little boy. Blood was trickling off one of his arms, which dangled out of his father’s arms. Thus began my witnessing of an endless stream of women and children who had been shot by the U.S. soldiers and were now being raced into the dirty clinic, the cars speeding over the curb out front, and weeping family members carriying in their wounded."
"Standing near the ambulance in frustration, Maki [the manager of the clinic] told us, They (U.S. soldiers) shot the ambulance and they shot the driver after they checked his car, and knew he was carrying nothing. Then they shot him. And then they shot the ambulance. And now I have no ambulance to evacuate more than twenty wounded people.[...]"
Gee, I didn't hear about this on the news either.
Those have to be some thick bubbles these people are hiding in.
Lets make two lists, one with the 'good' news, the other with the bad. If you survive to complete the first part you'll already have a jump on the second.
And a large part of it depends on your perspective. How much good news do you have to report if you're one of the 2+ million displaced Iraqis? Probably more than if you're still living in Baghdad. How much good news do you think Maki has to report?
It seems that the only ones reporting "good news" are the officers who still support Bush, or the ones that know from experience that anything other than good news will put you on the fast track to "retirement". Oh, and Fox'ers.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
More Ineptitude On Bush's Watch
I just finished the New York Times article "Death of Spy Satellite Program".
I wonder how many billions of dollars have been wasted due to the lack of oversight, mis-management, and corruption in the past seven years of George Bush (and Republican domination). At least in this case they know how much was lost, but between Katrina and Iraq there are billions completely unaccounted for.
I wonder how many billions of dollars have been wasted due to the lack of oversight, mis-management, and corruption in the past seven years of George Bush (and Republican domination). At least in this case they know how much was lost, but between Katrina and Iraq there are billions completely unaccounted for.
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