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2001.10.21 : 2001.10.27
Saturday, October 27, 2001
Blab. Rejoice. Another Plurp reader finds self-realization.
I, too, fell victim to the
geek test:
I took the test, scored an 18, which
told me "I wish I was a geek," to which I replied - "No, I don't!"
So I proceeded to go through the questions again, decided two were answered
poorly, and that answering "correctly" would produce a more accurate outcome.
I scored a 12, and again was told,
"I wish I was a geek," to which I insisted - "This is ridiculous!"
I quickly returned to the test sheet, changed the questions that, although
true, CERTAINLY wouldn't REALLY make me geekish.
I still scored a 3, was told "I wish
I was a geek." Then I figured it out - I had taken a silly geek test
3 TIMES just to prove I had no connection whatsoever to geekdom, and each
time was told "I wish I was a geek."
Perhaps the test knows me better than
I do....
We congratulate our reader for this rare insight.
Blab. A reader who, like us, just can't let go of the nostalgia
for times gone by, writes:
I still plunk a quarter in
the machine every time I walk by a Ms. Pac-Man. Problem is the machines
are so old the joysticks never work quite right. And some programmer
was unhappy scoring only 100,000 on the game, so he decided to make many
of the Ms. Pac-Man's go twice the speed of sound, making it even harder
to maneuver. I miss the good ol' days....
By the way, I was amused at the fact
that 25 cents bought you 3 1/2 hours of Battlezone, but I don't think you
factored in the total number of quarters which allowed you to get good
at it.
It's been many, many years since we found a Battlezone game. The last one
we found had a similar problem: The left tank tread refused to go into
reverse. We must admit that this made the game significantly more challenging.
But we still go the high score on that machine, heh.
The number of quarters we spent become the World's Best Battlezone Player
was actually not the significant cost, even though we were a starving graduate
student at the time, barely able to afford food after we paid for tuition
and books. Rather, it was the time. Friend Randy and I spent countless
hours, mostly walking to and from lunch, trying to figure out the algorithm
that the Bad Guys used in the game, and trying to come up with tactics
that would both defeat them and not get us killed. Imagine us walking across
a broad expanse of grass at U.C. San Diego, pretending to be, alternately,
an enemy tank and a player, day after day after day.
No wonder we spent so much time in grad school.
Blab. Expanding our intellectual horizons beyond the dim and
limited confines of the California legislature,
a reader writes:
I think before any legislator
reads "legislating for dummies" he or she should instead read (several
times preferably) "all I ever needed to know I learned in kindergarten."
The same goes for Bush, bin Laden,
Sharon, Arafat, ....
Most of these folks were prolly kicked out of Kindergarten. For partying,
knocking over other kids' blocks, ...
Yak. Marvelous out-of-context line in Neil Simon's most recent
45
Seconds from Broadway, a cute, Simonesque but otherwise undistinguished
comedy.
I know what you're doing,
Charles. You're thinking in French again.
Yow. Go play with all the little things-on-springs in MyPhysicsLab.
Really. Fun stuff, especially for those of you who liked the little
yellow squares. (leuschke)
 Plurp.
The blue dog was
cute but
otherwise undistinguished
Friday, October 26, 2001
Blab. Writing about one of the Blab entries yesterday,
a reader presents us with a difficult etiquette problem.
you meant Lewis Carroll,
right?
Perhaps one of our other readers can explain
it to this kind reader?
Blab. Mistaking us for a GIF file, a reader writes:
Hey, Blue Dog, how many games
will the World Series go this year??
Blab. A reader spreads rumors.
Rumor has it you also had
a bad experience with "Sims." Is this true?
The Sims was one of our obsessions a while ago. It was kinda fun.
We developed a moderately odd family of Sims with aspirations towards becoming
mad scientists and crime lords in their modest one bedroom house in suburban
Somewhere. We developed their house, their careers, their neighborhood
friendships. We worked for quite some time on the architecture of a wonderful
high-end estate. But it wasn't enough.
How are they doing tonight?, Helen would ask. Fine, we
would say. But they're having trouble taking out the trash.
And that was the problem. No matter how advanced they became in their
abilities, their careers or their abodes, they never learned to take out
the trash until the place was a total mess, never learned to water the
garden, never learned to go to the bathroom. It was like being God for
a family of two-year-olds.
And that, we find, is the common problem of resource-limited society
games: Resource constraints are such an integral part of the game that
game designers just can't conceive of making them easy. As a result, you
spend all your time in the more advanced parts of the game fiddling with
trivial resources instead of doing high-level decision making.
And that's just plain dull.
Blab. A reader on the verge of literacy writes:
I AM 12% GEEK.
I wanna be a geek. But I'm not. Why
would I even want to be one. Do I think it's fun? I should try writting
an online test application at 1 am in my underwear.
Take
the GEEK Test at Fuali.com!
We suspect this is the marketing manager at fuali.com.
Hey - it's a dot-com. They can't afford people with high school educations
any more.
Blab. Dimwit reader Julio Urrutia, still
infected with the Sircam virus, once again writes:
Hola como estas ?
Te mando este archivo para que me
des tu punto de vista
Nos vemos pronto, gracias.
... and once again sends us an infected file. Thanks, Julio, but could
you clean up your act instead? Sheesh.
Blab. A reader not too retro for this page writes:
I like chuckie egg.
And frogger. Oh, and Jet Set Willy. Am I too retro for this
page?
Yes. But then, so are we. We think we still have the high score for Battlezone
- that great first-person tank game from Atari - 3,500,000. Three and a
half exhausting hours of playing for twenty five cents.
Those were the days.
Blab. Victor Black puts forward a rather unlikely hypothesis.
To: PlurpMail@stevewhite.org
I noticed your email address on a
list serve related to engineering and technology. With your permission,
we would like to send you information regarding new real-time collaboration
and utilities based on your interests. Please click the following link
and opt-in to our product updates and e-newsletter, click here.
Cordially,
Victor Black
An award will be given to anyone who can find PlurpMail@stevewhite.org
on an engineering and technology listserve prior to today.
Plop. Now our clever friends in the California legislature are
passing
new laws by mistake. These folks just can't get anything
right.
Authors take note! There's a hot market for a Legislating for Dummies
book.
Yo. We love traditional media companies. They post an article
about a big
new Internet thing and don't give the
URL.
An Internet archive containing
more text than any library in history will open its digital doors today,
giving researchers and the public access to just about everything posted
on the World Wide Web over the last five years.
The free archive, created by a San
Francisco computer entrepreneur named Brewster Kahle, allows academics
to conduct the electronic equivalent of archeological digs, rooting through
reams of material illustrating the evolution of the Web and its role in
American society.
The Internet Archive, informally called
the Wayback Machine, holds more than 10 billion Web pages dating to 1996,
including millions that had vanished as dot-coms collapsed, big companies
scaled back or updated their offerings, and hobbyist Webmasters lost interest.
Yeah, it's kinda cool, in a conceptual way. Brewster's both clever and
wild, and a friend of ours is running this thing during the summers. Still
... what's it really good for?
We had a discussion about it with Brewster a couple of years ago, when
it was still in the planning stage.
The problem with collections of information like libraries, he
said excitedly, is that there's not room for everything. So someone
has to exercise editorial judgment - what gets included in the collection
and what gets left out. We're buying terabytes of disk so we can record
everything! That way, there's no editorial filter in the way.
But what happens, we asked, when everyone and everything in
the world has a webcam on it, streaming every trivial thing that happens
in its view at, say, 1Mpel resolution at 20 frames/sec? If the color depth
is just one byte per pixel that's 20MB/sec. If there are a billion such
people or things, that's 20 Petabytes/sec, or 6*1023
Bytes/year [that's 0.6 YottaBytes/year
for those of you keeping track]. You'd better buy more disks.
Oh, said Brewster, we're not going to include video.
Then ... ?
Plurp. We had the great good fortune yesterday of sitting through
an hour-long company-wide broadcast of our company President reviewing
third
quarter results.
Fortunately, something good came
of it.
Plop. Oh shit. It's
law now.
Plop. Does bin Laden have nuclear material? Maybe.
That would explain a lot of recent events, such as the acquiescence of
otherwise sensible people to crypto restrictions and massive, worldwide
eavesdropping, or the oddly eager participation in the coalition of such
countries as
Pakistan.
But maybe he
can't make a nuclear weapon out of it. That would be not quite as bad.
If that has any meaning at all in this context.
Plurp.
The blue dog
was always happy
to answer reader
questions
Thursday, October 25, 2001
Blab. A reader challenges our math
and asserts its own.
Re: "It's getting pretty
bad when a third of our reader contributions come from viruses. We figure
all of our loyal readers got bored by our obsession with all this recent
Bad Stuff."
How do you know that only one third
of the Plurp reader contributions come from viruses? All that you
really know is that one third of the contributions come from badly written
and obvious viruses.
Please manually delete all your files
now!
Plurp reader #1
We value each and every one of our readers. That's the only explanation.
Blab. In response to our statement that we weren't
going to talk about recent Bad Stuff for a while, a reader emits the
following ASCII string:
{{sound of applause}}
What is the sound of one bracket clapping?
Blab. A similar reader writes:
I am glad the Blue Dog changed
the subject. I'd like to do that too. Oh, the Yankees are just fine.
It's the Mariners that don't feel so good.
Yeah, we don't really follow football much.
Blab. A reader theorizes thusly:
Perhaps you are receiving
so little Blab because many of your readers are exercising their right
to not
speak.
Though not you, presumably.
Blab. A reader answers our pregnant question about special
activities.
Special Activities (in layman's
terms) - What the President tells them to do (whoever "them" is) even though
he tells the Press that he has no knowledge of what they (see "them" above)
are doing.
Of course, "congressional oversight"
- now THERE'S a term worth discussing further....
We think the whole thing's a Congressional oversight, but that's just us.
Blab. A reader reveals that it is ...
Feeling all friendly toward
the ACLU web site.
This makes us wonder about the evolutionary advantage to humans of feeling
emotional connections with parts of the Internet infrastructure.
Blab. On the phoneticization of STFW,
a reader suggests:
Problem with "Stuff you"
for STFW is that it's more likely to be taken to mean STFU, which is a
perfectly good acronym in its own right.
Indeed.
Stout toads fear us.
Blab. A first-time reader writes:
your box is awfully small
so excuse me not leaving a message
You are most certainly excused. Perhaps you need a bigger
box?
Blab. Quoting Louis Carol, a reader writes:
"The time has come," the
Plurper said, "to talk of many things: Of screws - and chips - and feeling
lax - Of Babbages - and Thrings - And why my bee is toiling not - And whether
figs have rings."
Um. We could also briefly discuss
the fact that Civilization III is coming out soon.
-pTang
Yeah, OK. Civ III is coming out soon.
We must admit to never getting hooked on Civ-like games. Dunno quite
why. Too much routine maintenance of low-level stuff in the civilizations,
maybe. Not enough splashy gore, maybe. Or maybe we prefer first-person
games.
We never got hooked on Myst either. As soon as we blew out the
fuse in the power station (when it was not obvious that would happen) and
had to go around searching for fuses just to get back to where we were
originally, it reminded us too much of work and we stopped playing.
We liked Baldur's Gate II,
which has the usual isometric god-like view and in which you control at
least a few characters, but that was as much a social experience with friend
Steve as anything else.
So... what games do our readers
like and why? (And we mean computer games here, of course. You're
free to like other games too, but we don't really care.)
Blab. A reader lobbying for a group hug writes:
The next day, Mr. Daschle
said, the president asked him, "Do you think it's OK if that we hugged
each other in front of all these people?" Of his reply Mr. Daschle recalled,
"I said, 'It just seemed like the natural thing to do.'"
- New York Times, 10/23/01
We see a significant cultural shift coming in the Dubya administration.
Yo. Ham
shoes (butter homes and, later, margarine homes; butter churches).
Chicken
shoes. Sausage shoes.
Cheese
shoes.
Cat
shoes.
In case you're in the market.
Yo. Our favorite Beatle
was Larry.
Plurp.
-
When I woke up at 4 AM today and couldn't
go back to sleep, I was thinking about ...
(c) azure seas and sunlit dolphins.
-
When three police cars sped past me today
with sirens blaring, I figured ...
(d) someone reported a purse-napping.
-
When the phone rang today I ...
(b) answered it.
-
When I opened my mail today I ...
(d) hoped it might be someone sending
me money.
-
Driving home, I worried that the driver
of the unmarked truck who was driving wildly was ...
(c) talking on his cell phone.
-
When my spouse asked me how my day was,
I ...
(c) said it was fine.
-
Watching CNN tonight, I wondered ...
(b) who writes the ticker tape stream
at the bottom of the screen.
-
Going to bed tonight, I kept thinking
...
(a) What will happen tomorrow?
Plurp.
The blue dog discovered that
not
talking about it didn't
help
Wednesday, October 24, 2001
Blab. In response to our query about what readers are
doing to preserve civil liberties, someone tells
us:
I am exercising my right
to speak
anonymously.
And good for you!
Blab. A reader suggests a way to vocalize our current favorite
term.
I suggest STFW be pronounced
"stuff-you"
As in What does STFW mean? Stuff you!
We like it!
Blab. A reader named Julio Urrutia writes:
Subj: cantrips
Hola como estas ?
Te mando este archivo para que me
des tu punto de vista
Nos vemos pronto, gracias.
... and attaches a file named cantrip.zip.pif.
Of course, Julio didn't exactly write this. It was the Sircam
virus, with which his computer is infected, that kindly sent us a note
with a copy of itself. The virus got the PlurpMail address from
Julio's computer, meaning that Julio is a devoted Plurp reader.
So hey, Julio, get summa dat anti-virus software, k d00d?
BTW, Babelfish translates
this as:
Hello like these? I send
to east file so that me to you DES your point of view We see ourselves
soon, thanks.
... which is an astonishingly bad translation! A better translation
(if I can remember any of the little Spanish I learned 35 years ago) might
be:
Hello how are you? I send
you this archive to get your point of view. See you soon, thanks.
We particularly love the translation of como estas as like these
rather than how are you, and este as east rather than
this.
Great technology.
Plop. It's getting pretty bad when a third of our reader contributions
come from viruses. We figure all of our loyal readers got bored by our
obsession with all this recent Bad Stuff.
So we're declaring pretty much of a moratorium on obsessing about recent
Bad Stuff, except for a few tangential references today. Until we change
our mind.
So ... what shall we talk about?
Plurp. What does this
mean?
Special activities consist
of the planning and execution of actions abroad in support of national
foreign policy objectives so that the role of the US government is not
apparent or acknowledged publicly. These activities are subject to limitations
imposed by Executive Order and in conjunction with a Presidential finding
and congressional oversight.
Readers are invited to guess.
Plurp.
What
if Congress Were Obliterated?
What? Oh - sorry. We were just thinking.
Plop. Hallmark and other august literary agencies are hard at
work. Unfortunately.
Plurp.
The blue dog
changed
the subject
Tuesday, October 23, 2001
Blab. A reader both lazy and cynical writes:
The solution to finding an
authoritative source for "The show must go on" is simple: BECOME the authoritative
source.
Step 1) Assert your qualifications
to be an authoritative source.
Step 2) Assert your knowledge of the
origin of "The show must go on." (and may I recommend use a Vaudeville
theme)
Step 3) Wait a week for Google and
other search engines to catch up.
I'm surprised you gave up before pouncing
on this idea.
You may recommend whatever you want; it's a free country (this week). On
the other hand, it's possible to STFW and discover:
There are so bewilderingly
many laws in the Outside World. We of the circus know only one law — simple
and unfailing. The Show must go on.
Josephine
Demott Robinson, The Circus Lady (1926).
Blab. A reader of astonishing astutamento writes:
It seems you don't like war
very much.
Or government.
Quite the contrary. We love war! Cool new technology! Things that
go boom! Arnold Schwarzenegger! Stuff like that.
And government? We love government! Let us count the ways:
-
Plurp. Another opportunistic bit of pre-war
nostalgia.
Remember the Geneva Convention?
Yeah, that was great.
Yak.
You said you were just going
to scare him !
Doesn't he look scared ?
Plurp. So what are you doing to preserve civil liberties,
hmm? Do tell.
Yow. For those of you who remember...
YUSUF ISLAM, the singer formerly
known as Cat Stevens, has roundly condemned the attacks on the United States
by professed Muslims as a contradiction of the meaning of the Koran. [...]
After revealing that he no longer owns a guitar, [he] sang his song Peace
Train unaccompanied, the first time that he has sung a Cat Stevens
song in public for more than 20 years.
Thank you, Yusuf.
Now I've been crying lately,
thinking about the world as it is
Why must we go on hating, why can't
we live in bliss
Cause out on the edge of darkness,
there rides a peace train
Oh peace train take this country,
come take me home again
Plurp. You won't see this in the New York papers. You'd have
to go all the way to Lalaland
for that.
From psychiatrists on Park
Avenue to emergency room doctors in the Bronx, experts report that New
Yorkers -- already not the calmest 8 million Americans -- are emotionally
fragile. They are even edgier, prone to bouts of crying, clinically depressed,
fighting off intrusive thoughts of new disasters and obsessing over every
siren and rumor. Some started smoking again.
(Only in California would that last sentence be included.)
So, is this really true? If you're a New Yorker (or dream of being one),
tell
us what you think. If you don't have that pleasure, tell
us if you're feeling emotionally fragile anyway.
Plurp. You
have zero privacy. Get over it.
Yo. We seem to be a mere 29%
geek. Gotta work on that. (allura)
You probably work in computers,
or a history deptartment at a college. You never really fit in with the
"normal" crowd. But you have friends, and this is a good thing.
Yow. And speaking of geeking, we learned a great new word today:
STFW.
If only it were more easily pronounceable, it would become our most commonly
used term! (Dave)
Yak.
Circular error probability
zero. Impact with high order detonation. Have a nice day.
Plurp.
The blue dog
thought that the
government was
always right
Monday, October 22, 2001
Blab. Emperor Palpatine
falls victim to those dumb personality
tests.
Disappointed, but not surprised,
to find that the "Friend" I am most like is Ross. Thanks, but no
thanks--I'd rather stick with Emperor Palpatine, who was not much of a
friend to anyone.
Power. Order. Stormtroopers. The
choice is obvious.
Blab. A reader far too literary to be hanging out here writes:
Hmmm... You could extend
on the "Barmaid and fat old innkeeper"
theme to be Monsieur and Madame Thenardier, from Les Miserables.
(The musical, wherein they're mostly comic relief, and not the book, wherein
they're genuinely despicable people.)
With an S&M theme? Do send pictures.
Yow. Here's a saying that we need to start working into conversation.
Plop.
The Taliban says they shot
down a U.S. helicopter.
They U.S. says the didn't.
Did so.
Did not.
Did so.
Did not.
Unfortunately, as this particular playground argument proceeds, people
die.
Plop. Apparently we're not the only ones worked up about the
U.S. government forgetting
about the Constitution for a while.
[T]he government will not
say which people are being held or what the charges might be. In some cases,
attorneys and legal analysts said, the usual rules governing detentions
have been altered or even suspended. [...]
It is believed several hundred men
-- most of Mideast descent, some U.S. citizens and some not -- are being
held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York. But no one knows
exactly how many.
The government has thrown an unprecedented
shroud of secrecy over the arrests and won gag orders barring most defense
attorneys from even disclosing their clients' names.
"We have only the slightest idea at
this stage of how many people have been arrested, how many are still being
held in jail, what they have been charged with," said Steve Shapiro, national
legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union. [...]
"I observed bruises on his upper body,
upper arm, back of his neck, welts on his wrists and ankles," [a lawyer
for a detainee] said. "During the interview, I became very incensed about
that because he informed me that the bruises were inflicted by the guards."
[...]
"I think it's clearly stretching the
law, and it's probably breaking the law in many instances," [said David
Cole, constitutional law professor at Georgetown University Law Center].
"The usual rule is in an investigation, you ask questions first and you
detain only as a last resort. Here, it seems that they [federal investigators]
are detaining first."
It's a small price to pay for safety, you say? Well, a small price for
you
to pay, maybe.
Yo. On the topic of U.S. law enforcement
wanting to torture suspected terrorists for information, rebecca
finds very relevant info from the Geneva Convention on treatment
of prisoners of war, and on treatment
of civilians in time of war.
Basically, it says: You can't do that. Please make a note of
that.
Yo. Have there really been thousands of civilian deaths in Afghanistan
as a result of the bombings? Here's an argument that the
answer is no. Interestingly, it is backed up by a well-reasoned
analysis, rather than the U.S. government's flat but baseless denials.
Yo. Did you know that lots of U.S. military training manuals
are not only public but on the Web? Well, they
are. Most of them are pretty dull, as you might expect. But there are
a few goodies.
And there is this
gem.
The use of weapons that employ
fire, such as tracer ammunition, flamethrowers, napalm, and other incendiary
agents, against targets requiring their use is not a violation of international
law. They should not, however, be employed to cause unnecessary suffering
to individuals.
Only necessary suffering!
Curiously, the site referenced above has a number of documents behind
password protection. Equally curiously, there are Web sites here
and here that have either
linked more directly to some of these documents or made copies of them
before the military got so spooky about them.
Plurp.
I believe the foreseeable
future just ended.
Christopher
Bassford
Professor of Strategy at the National
War College
Plurp.
The blue dog
never did see
the foreseeable future
Sunday, October 21, 2001
Blab. A reader who admires the American spirit writes:
What I like most about the
American Entrepreneurial spirit: identify
an opportunity and act on it! Isn't it great??!!
The reader gives a link to the evil New York Times, which will begin charging
you to look at it in a week or so, but whatever.
Already reeling from the
loss of 700 employees in the attack, [Cantor Fitzgerald, the brokerage
firm devastated by the World Trade Center attacks] learned yesterday that
one of its missing employees, Laura Gilly, 33, had become a victim again,
this time at the hands of a friend with whom she had worked at the company.
The police have charged Sandra Miranda,
35, with stealing Ms. Gilly's credit card and going on a nearly $5,000,
three-day shopping spree at the Staten Island Mall. Ms. Miranda may have
stolen the credit card while checking in on Ms. Gilly's cat at her Brooklyn
apartment after the trade center attack.
[She went to] the Banana Republic
and Ann Taylor stores, where she charged hundreds of dollars in clothing.
Next, she visited Goff Jewelers, buying a $2,000 bracelet. A report in
The New York Daily News yesterday said that Ms. Miranda also bought $2,000
in religious figurines from a gift shop in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.
We think it was pretty clearly the cat's fault.
Blab. The little Morton Salt Girl writes:
On the other hand, though
I expected to be left starry-eyed, I kind of wish you hadn't sent me Koontz's
house of madness where the anti-Israel and white supremacists guys reign.
Or do they pour?
Yrs, The little Morton Salt Girl
Yeah, isn't Koontz a colorful
character? Oh, and we forgot to thank Ian
for pointing him out to us.
Blab. A reader who keeps sending us unlinkable references to
articles on AOL sends us this unlinkable article on AOL, which we nonetheless
found on the LA
Times site.
Study: Chubby Birds Fly
Better
As skies fill with millions of migrating
birds, European scientists say the seasonal miracle appears to hinge on
a seeming contradiction: The fatter the bird, the more efficiently it flies.
[Said Brian Harrington, senior scientist
at Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences near Boston], "I think it's
pretty exciting stuff"
Thus we learn that there are hopeless nerds in every field.
Plurp. We've been paging through Google again, looking for references
to our humble Plurp. Yes, it is an exciting weekend. Why do
you ask?
In any event, we are tickled pink (what does that mean?) to report
no fewer than three new links. We know that you, like us, are agog
(what does that mean?).
This time we discover a person named Sara
(who may also be ~Sara), who claims
we are full of Plurp. That might be true.
Second, there's Unami Tsunami,
who puts us in rather posh blogging company. Yo, Jane - can you see us
blush?
Finally, there is an attributed but unlinked (tsk) reference
from Plurp on scatterverse.
Try to contain your welling excitement.
Yow. OK. You folks who are desperate to find traditional prognosticatory
texts that predict all the bad stuff happening right now, kindly take your
lowered bar of credulity to Wevelationth,
the entire Book of Revelations, with a speech impediment. Honest. Really
funny! (Unami Tsunami)
Yow. As our loyal readers know, we don't really approve of humor
based on war. At least, not unless it's our own humor. But this
is really funny! It is. In a violent, sick sort of way. And we like that.
Plurp. Listening to the rhetoric after Sept. 11, we thought this
might have happened behind the scenes. Now we find out that it
did.
CIA Told to Do 'Whatever
Necessary' to Kill Bin Laden
President Bush last month signed an
intelligence order directing the CIA to undertake its most sweeping and
lethal covert action since the founding of the agency in 1947, explicitly
calling for the destruction of Osama bin Laden and his worldwide al Qaeda
network, according to senior government officials. [...]
"The gloves are off," one senior official
said. "The president has given the agency the green light to do whatever
is necessary. Lethal operations that were unthinkable pre-September 11
are now underway." [...]
[T]he CIA-operated Predator unmanned
drone with high-resolution cameras has been equipped with Hellfire antitank
missiles that can be fired at targets of opportunity. [...] The weapons
capability [...] was developed specifically to attack bin Laden, the officials
said. [...]
The FBI and CIA have been given limited
access in the last several weeks to a top bin Laden lieutenant who was
arrested after Sept. 11 and is being held in a foreign country. [...] He
is believed by several senior officials to be the highest-ranking member
of al Qaeda ever held for systematic interrogation.
Given the CIA's new ability to do whatever is necessary, just what
do you suppose systematic interrogation is? Oh - don't worry, that's
our next
topic.
FBI and Justice Department
investigators are increasingly frustrated by the silence of jailed suspected
associates of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, and some are beginning
to that say that traditional civil liberties may have to be cast aside
if they are to extract information about the Sept. 11 attacks and terrorist
plans.
More than 150 people rounded up by
law enforcement officials in the aftermath of the attacks remain in custody,
but attention has focused on four suspects held in New York who the FBI
believes are withholding valuable information. [...]
Among the alternative strategies under
discussion are using drugs or pressure tactics, such as those employed
occasionally by Israeli interrogators, to extract information. Another
idea is extraditing the suspects to allied countries where security services
sometimes employ threats to family members or resort to torture.
Under U.S. law, interrogators in criminal
cases can lie to suspects, but information obtained by physical pressure,
inhumane treatment or torture cannot be used in a trial. In addition, the
government interrogators who used such tactics could be sued by the victim
or charged with battery by the government. [...]
One former senior FBI official with
a background in counterterrorism said recently, "You can't torture, you
can't give drugs now, and there is logic, reason and humanity to back that."
But, he added, "you could reach a point where they allow us to apply drugs
to a guy. . . . But I don't think this country would ever permit torture,
or beatings." [...]
The FBI threatened to have [a person
suspected of having information about a terrorist incident] sent back to
Saudi Arabia, where he could have faced beheading [...].
Torture "goes against every grain
in my body," [the former chief of FBI counterterrorism] said. "Chances
are you are going to get the wrong person and risk damage or killing them."
In the end, he said, there has to be another way.
But - gosh - that's not the CIA working against some ferrin devil in some
awful, remote land, now is it? No, it's domestic U.S. law enforcement working
against people in the U.S. who haven't even been tried, much less convicted
of anything. These are folks that someone suspects of something, and they
are talking about drugging them, torturing them, threatening them with
beheading and threatening their families.
What country did you say this was?
One thing for certain: We sure hope no one suspects us of anything.
How about you?
Plurp. The fun thing about being at war is that you get to indulge
in nostalgia about the recent past. Here's an example.
Do you remember the way it
was before the war?
No person shall [...] be deprived
of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
Plurp.
The blue dog
suspected everyone
of everything
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