time*treat's Blog

In the same week:

A couple feet of snow and a (relatively) small earthquake.

No special reason, I suddenly am thinking about locusts.

http://www.watoday.com.au/world/us-soldier-charged-with-waterboarding-4yearold-daughter-20100209-nnwq.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8505376.stm

A US soldier has been charged with "waterboarding" his four-year-old daughter because she could not recite her ABCs, police in the state of Washington say.

In a fit of rage and under the influence of alcohol, 27-year-old Joshua Tabor and his girlfriend pushed his daughter's head, face up, under a running tap in the kitchen sink, says Yelm police chief Todd Stancil.

"From what I understand it is very similar to waterboarding," Stancil said on Monday, referring to the interrogation technique - a form of simulated drowning - used on war on terrorism suspects and now banned as torture.

"And to make it only worse, the daughter is afraid of water," the police chief said.

"She would not recite her ABCs, is what we gathered. So according to him (the father), that was a perfectly fine punishment," he said.

Police found the girl hiding in a bathroom after responding to reports of a disturbance early on January 31.

"The suspect was intoxicated, walking around the neighbourhood with a kevlar helmet, threatening to break out windows in the neighbourhood," he said.

"Once the girlfriend of Mr Tabor disclosed that he abused his four-year-old daughter, we shifted our investigation to the daughter.

"We found the daughter hiding in the bathroom. Keep in mind that it was 2am in the morning, so she was up and awake and hiding in the bathroom in fear of her father," he said.

He said the girl had been placed with a foster family.

Tabor was arrested and charged with second degree assault.

(Riiiiiight, "banned" when they get caught.) ~t*t

How come few ever point out that the continents fit together in "both" directions?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxtJGoZjgRs

http://www.poodwaddle.com/clocks2.htm

If you are part of a subversive organization, defined as a "corporation, society, association, camp, group, bund, political party, assembly, body or organization, composed of two or more persons, which directly or indirectly advocates, advises, teaches or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States, of this State or of any political subdivision thereof by force or violence or other unlawful means" you must first register and pay a $5.00 filing fee (possibly refunded after the overthrow? )

SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES REGISTRATION ACT
http://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t23c029.htm

copy of the form (pdf format)
http://fitsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/SubversiveAgentForm.pdf

commentary
http://rawstory.com/2010/02/south-carolinas-subversive-activities-registration-act-force/
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/south-carolina-terrorist-registration-law-paperwork-al-queda-2569751.html

We will shock-and-awe you with our ... paperwork-of-doom machine! (Hey, it works on 'Mericans.)

Winning hearts and minds over the skies of South America.

See if you can identify the "action" taken against those involved; not "responsible" but "involved". Is this some of that "neuro-linguistic programming" folks keep talking about?

http://detnews.com/article/20100127/NATION/1270405/Terror-suspect-kept-visa-to-avoid-tipping-off-larger-investigation

Terror suspect kept visa to avoid tipping off larger investigation
Nathan Hurst / Detroit News Washington Bureau

Washington --The State Department didn't revoke the visa of foiled terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab because federal counterterrorism officials had begged off revocation, a top State Department official revealed Wednesday.

Patrick F. Kennedy, an undersecretary for management at the State Department, said Abdulmutallab's visa wasn't taken away because intelligence officials asked his agency not to deny a visa to the suspected terrorist over concerns that a denial would've foiled a larger investigation into al-Qaida threats against the United States.

"Revocation action would've disclosed what they were doing," Kennedy said in testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security. Allowing Adbulmutallab to keep the visa increased chances federal investigators would be able to get closer to apprehending the terror network he is accused of working with, "rather than simply knocking out one solider in that effort."

The committee's hearing continues a series across Capitol Hill that started last week, all looking into the events leading up to and after the attempted bombing of Flight 253 over Detroit. Law enforcement officials say Abdulmutallab tried to detonate an explosive hidden in his underwear on board the flight from Amsterdam shortly before its landing at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus on Christmas Day.

Since the failed attack, criticism has swirled around leaders of the U.S. intelligence community who have indicated they were warned by the suspect's father about a month before the flight of a potential terror threat, but failed to stop Abdmutallab, despite other warning signs like the fact that he purchased a one-way ticket to Detroit with cash.

Politicians have also criticized the decision to treat Abdulmutallab as a civilian after the arrest in Michigan, with Miranda rights being read to him after less than an hour of interrogation and without input from the intelligence community.

Rep. Candice Miller, R-Harrison Township, the only Michigan House member on the Homeland Security Committee, said in a Tuesday statement that she planned to question officials on that matter at today's hearing.

From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20100127/NATION/1270405/Terror-suspect-kept-visa-to-avoid-tipping-off-larger-investigation#ixzz0eXs2tpsv

Feel expendable yet, or still falling for the "if this is what it takes to be safe"? Cui bono.

(Plus, now strangers can oogle your entire family in real-time or delayed gratification)

By Jacob Hornberger
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=579

Would someone please explain to me how it’s possible that millions of Toyota vehicles have that accelerator problem? I thought the federal government was supposed to keep us safe from these sorts of things. Consider, for example, this page (http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/rules/import/fmvss/index.html), which contains the “Federal Motor Vehicle Standards and Regulations” issued by the Office of Vehicle Safety Compliance, Safety Assurance section, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation.. It states: “These requirements are specified in such a manner ‘that the public is protected against unreasonable risk of crashes occurring as a result of the design, construction, or performance of motor vehicles and is also protected against unreasonable risk of death or injury in the event crashes do occur.’”

Indeed, what about those much-vaunted car “safety inspections,” where people have to wait in line for an hour or two to get their cars inspected and, of course, hand over some moolah to the state for the privilege of having a pretty decal on their windshield? Since they’re supposed to ensure that our cars are safe (hey, they are called “safety” inspection stickers, right?), then how is it possible that people have been driving millions of cars that are obviously unsafe?

Do you see the problem?

It’s actually the same problem with respect to the hundreds of millions of dollars lost by investors in the Bernie Madoff scandal. How is it possible that such a scandal occurred? Wasn’t everyone in Madoff’s line of work subject to federal regulations ensuring that this sort of thing wouldn’t happen?

Or how about the recent bouts of salmonella poisoning from hamburger meat? How is this possible? Isn’t the meat industry close regulated by federal officials? Doesn’t the “food” in Food and Drug Administration include beef? Isn’t the purpose of such regulations to ensure that the public is not subjected to these sorts of things?

As we libertarians have been pointing out for decades, the paternalistic state is nothing more than a big fraud and sham, one designed to convince people to fund a gigantic, bureaucratic, parasitic state that will keep them safe from the vicissitudes of life. Yet, as people once again learn, all those beloved regulations and regulators don’t keep people safe at all. Bad things continue to happen in life, as they always will. The nanny society can’t stop that.

Unfortunately, the problem doesn’t just involve parasitic bureaucrats sucking hard-earned money out of people’s pockets under the pretense that they’re keeping them safe. It’s much worse than that. The nanny state lulls lots of people into a peaceful state of innocent bliss in which they think they’re being kept safe from the hazards of ordinary life. Thus, people become less cautious and more gullible, and thus, are less safe than they otherwise would be.

What’s the libertarian solution? A complete separation of the economy and the state, one in which the government has no more power to regulate economic activity than it does to regulate religious activity.

Would there still be safety defects, stock-market frauds, and other such bad things? Sure, just as there are today. But the difference would be that people would tend toward developing a keener sense of self-responsibility and caution in their lives, knowing that the nanny state wasn’t purporting to take care of them.

Moreover, the free market (free, as in free of all government control) provides its own self-correcting mechanism that tends toward keeping people safe. Consider Toyota. It’s moving quickly toward finding a solution to the accelerator problem not because some federal bureaucrat is ordering it to. It’s doing so because of the threat of lawsuits and falling consumer demand for Toyota vehicles. In the free market, the consumer is the ultimate sovereign. If consumers stop buying Toyota vehicles, Toyota goes out of business, no matter how big and wealthy it is today.

The nanny state, like the socialistic welfare state, has proven to be a disaster and a fiasco and an expensive one at that. It’s time that Americans restored a genuine free-market society to our land by separating the economy and the state.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7111068/Revealed-the-racy-novel-written-by-the-worlds-most-powerful-climate-scientist.html

The chair of the UN's panel on climate change Dr Rajendra Pachauri has taken a break from writing academic papers on global warming to pen a racy romantic novel.

As the UN's climate change chief, Dr Rajendra Pachauri has spent his career writing only the driest of academic articles. But the latest offering from the chairman of the UN’s climate change panel is an altogether racier tome.

Some might even suggest Dr Pachauri’s first novel is frankly smutty.

Return to Almora, published in Dr Pachauri’s native India earlier this month, tells the story of Sanjay Nath, an academic in his 60s reminiscing on his "spiritual journey" through India, Peru and the US.

On the way he encounters, among others, Shirley MacLaine, the actress, who appears as a character in the book. While relations between Sanjay and MacLaine remain platonic, he enjoys sex – a lot of sex – with a lot of women.

In breathless prose that risks making Dr Pachauri, who will be 70 this year, a laughing stock among the serious, high-minded scientists and world leaders with whom he mixes, he details sexual encounter after sexual encounter.

The book, which makes reference to the Kama Sutra, starts promisingly enough as it tells the story of a climate expert with a lament for the denuded mountain slopes of Nainital, in northern India, where deforestation by the timber mafia and politicians has "endangered the fragile ecosystem".

But talk of "denuding" is a clue of what is to come.

By page 16, Sanjay is ready for his first liaison with May in a hotel room in Nainital. "She then led him into the bedroom," writes Dr Pachauri.

"She removed her gown, slipped off her nightie and slid under the quilt on his bed... Sanjay put his arms around her and kissed her, first with quick caresses and then the kisses becoming longer and more passionate.

"May slipped his clothes off one by one, removing her lips from his for no more than a second or two.

"Afterwards she held him close. ‘Sandy, I’ve learned something for the first time today. You are absolutely superb after meditation. Why don’t we make love every time immediately after you have meditated?’."

More follows, including Sanjay and friends queuing to have sexual encounters with Sajni, an impoverished but willing local: "Sanjay saw a shapely dark-skinned girl lying on Vinay’s bed. He was overcome by a lust that he had never known before ... He removed his clothes and began to feel Sajni’s body, caressing her voluptuous breasts."

Sadly for Sanjay, writes Dr Pachauri, "the excitement got the better of him, before he could even get started".

While teaching meditation to women in the US, Sanjay can once more barely contain his ardour. Again, breasts – usually heaving or else voluptuous – are thrust to the fore.

"He enjoyed the sensation of gently pushing Susan’s shoulders back a few inches, an action that served to lift her breasts even higher," writes Dr Pachauri. "He was excited by the sight of her heaving breasts, as she breathed in and out deeply."

A friend of Susan is taken to a motel by Sanjay but only after he has fondled her breasts – "which he just could not let go of" – inadvertently sounding the car horn at the same time.

Other passages in the novel involve group sex and more risqué sexual practices.

The novel was launched amid much fanfare with Bollywood stars and wealthy industrialists in attendance, a reflection of Dr Pachauri’s esteemed status in the country.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In the acknowledgement of his novel, Dr Pachauri admits to writing the book while flying around the world between meetings as IPCC chairman or else in his capacity as head of a research institute in Delhi.

But with calls for him to resign over academic blunders in the reports he presides over, some critics will question whether he should have devoted more time to scrutinising the science behind the reports.

Some will also wonder whether just a little bit of Dr Pachauri is reflected in Sanjay, although there is no suggestion Dr Pachauri has ever lusted after women quite so readily.

Both men are in their 60s, grew up in Nainital and obtained doctorates in the US. There are, of course, plenty of differences too.

Although the novel, is unlikely to win awards other than the Bad Sex in Fiction prize, it is at least to the lay reader more enjoyable than most of his other books.

Previous titles include the 1976 tome Dynamics of Electrical Energy Supply and Demand: An Economic Analysis (Praeger special studies in US economic, social and political issues.

Dearborn Police have kept it under wraps for 90 days.  They planned to release the autopsy results of Imam Luqman Ameen on Monday.  But Fox 2 has found out what's in it.  And the details already have some very alarmed. Fox 2's Brad Edwards was the first to break this story.

http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news/brads_edge/first-on-fox-2%3A-shocking-details-of-slain-imam%27s-autopsy

(video report at link)

... whether you want to or not.

http://townhall.com/news/world/2010/01/25/iraqs_chemical_ali_hanged_for_1988_gas_attack

Even in Saddam Hussein's ruthless regime, "Chemical Ali" stood apart, notable for his role in gassing 5,000 people in a Kurdish village the deadliest chemical weapons attack ever against civilians.

Ali Hassan al-Majid was hanged Monday, leaving a notorious legacy that stamped Saddam's regime as capable of unimaginable cruelty and brought unsettling questions about Iraq's stockpiles of poison gas and whether it could unleash them again.

The poison gas clouds that struck the village of Halabja began what would become an about-face by Washington which had supported Saddam during the eight-year war against Iran's new Islamic state in the 1980s*, but soon became his arch-foe and protector of the Kurds in their northern enclave.

*Now, they admit what "conspiracy nuts" were saying, years ago. This line has been omitted from many online versions of this story. Guess what kind of "support". It's unthinkable the Iranian leadership might use that fact for their own purposes. Kurds = important, Iranians = expendable. Uncle Jed also just happened to find some 'black gold/Texas tea' in the northern enclave of we-won't-call-it-Kurdistan-just-yet. ~t*t

"I want to kiss the hangman's rope," said Kamil Mahmoud, a 40-year-old teacher who lost eight family members in the March 16, 1988, attack in Iraq's Kurdish region.

Photos taken after the Halabja attack showed bodies of men, women, children and animals lying in heaps on the streets.

Al-Majid, 68, was executed about a week after he received his fourth death sentence since facing Iraqi courts after the fall of Saddam. He was one of the last high-profile members of the former Sunni-led regime still on trial in Iraq.

He said "Praise God" in Arabic as the sentence was read Jan. 17.

The only public record of the execution so far are two still photos shown briefly on state TV: one of him wearing red prison coveralls and the other of him on the gallows with a black hood over his head. The mood was far more controlled than the taunting reported at Saddam's hanging in December 2006.

Iraq's government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, gave no other details of the execution. But that didn't stop speculation that three deadly suicide attacks in Baghdad just before the official announcement of the death could have been retaliation for the act.

Al-Majid, who bore a striking resemblance to Saddam, carried out some of the regime's bloodiest missions.

In 1988, as the Iran-Iraq war was winding down, al-Majid commanded a scorched-earth campaign known as Anfal to wipe out a Kurdish rebellion in the north. An estimated 100,000 people most of them civilians were killed over less than a year after Saddam suspected the non-Arab Kurds of siding with Persian Iran during the war. But it was the Halabja attack that riveted the world's attention.

He led another sweeping campaign, crushing a Shiite uprising in southern Iraq after Saddam's military was driven from Kuwait in 1991.

Al-Majid was a warrant officer and motorcycle messenger in the army before Saddam's Baath party took power in a 1968 coup. He was promoted to general and served as defense minister from 1991-95, as well as a regional party leader.

During the war with Iran in the 1980s, al-Majid was part of command structure for Iraqi forces, which was accused of using chemical agents on Iranian troops in a conflict that left a total of 1 million dead. Two main formulas were cited by U.N. investigators: mustard gas, an oily liquid first used in World War I whose vapor can remain deadly for days; and tabun, a nerve gas that causes convulsions and paralysis before death.

"For Saddam Hussein, chemical weapons were a force multiplier, a way of countering the Iranian human-wave infantry tactics that were overwhelming Iraqi positions," said Jonathan Tucker, a Washington-based senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

The lingering worries about possible secret stockpiles helped fuel support for the U.S.-led invasion despite no clear evidence and Iraqi claims that it disposed of its chemical weapons, which are banned under international conventions.

During the trials after Saddam's fall, prosecutors played audiotapes of what they said were conversations between Saddam and al-Majid.

In one of the recordings, al-Majid was heard vowing to "leave no Kurd (alive) who speaks the Kurdish language."

He claimed he used such language as "psychological and propaganda" tools against the Kurds to frighten them into not fighting government forces.

In a January 2007 court hearing, he said a death sentence did not worry him.

"I will face death with open arms," he said.

The sentences to hang then came: first for the suppression of the Shiites in 1991, and then for the Anfal campaign and a third for a 1999 crackdown that sought to quell Shiite unrest after the slaying of a Shiite cleric who opposed the regime.

The previous sentences were not been carried out in part because Halabja survivors wanted to have their case against him heard.

"Chemical Ali was the symbol of crimes and genocide in modern history. Executing him is a lesson to those who do the same .... those who kill their people and use banned weapons," said Saadi Ahmed, a member in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party led by Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani.

In Saddam's hometown Tikrit some residents offered prayers for the loss of a man who remains a favored son.

"I give my condolences to the Iraqi people on the martyrdom of comrade Ali Hassan al-Majid. Tikrit and Iraq are proud of him," said one man from Tikrit, who refused to give his name.

The Halabja attack left many of the survivors with long-term medical problems such as permanent blindness, skin burns, respiratory and digestive problems and cancer, said Farman Othman, a doctor in Suleimaniyah who has treated a number of patients.

Joost Hiltermann, deputy program director for the Middle East and North Africa at International Crisis Group, said what set Halabja apart was its "full scale attack on a population center with a weapon of mass destruction."

"In terms of proliferation and human rights abuses, this is an order of magnitude different than going into a city and just shooting up the place," said Hiltermann, who is the author of a book on the Halabja attacks.

Practicing what they learned from the G20?

http://rawstory.com/2010/01/police-18-year-old-violinist-over-mountain-dew-bottle/  (with video)

Pittsburgh police have reassigned three plainclothes officers to uniformed duty pending an investigation into the beating of an 18-year-old student.

A police report indicates that officers became interested in Jordan Miles when they suspected he had a gun in his coat. After beating Miles in the head with a closed fist, the officers discovered the object was a Mountain Dew bottle.

Miles, a violinist and honor student who attends the prestigious Creative and Performing Arts High School, says he resisted arrest because he thought the men were trying to abduct him and didn't identify themselves as police.

(Who are you to fight back, when three strangers approach you in the dark?)

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/jan/19/fbi-arrests-21-las-vegas-foreign-bribery-case/

The FBI arrested 21 people Monday in Las Vegas in what is being described as the largest single investigation and prosecution against individuals in the history of the Justice Department's enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Those individuals and another person arrested in Miami are executives and employees of military and law enforcement products companies who were indicted for engaging in schemes to bribe foreign government officials to obtain and retain business, the Justice Department announced today.

In connection with the FBI's undercover operation, 16 indictments were unsealed today. The indictments were returned on Dec. 11 by a grand jury in Washington.

All 21 of the individuals arrested in Las Vegas had been attending the 2010 Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show and Conference, which runs from today through Friday at the Sands Expo & Convention Center. All were arrested off-site at an undisclosed location in the city, federal authorities said at a press conference held in Washington.

"It just happened that we had the opportunity to bring them all together at one time at one place," Kevin Perkins, assistant director of the FBI's criminal division said.

Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer of ther Justice Department's Criminal Division said that while Las Vegas is a convention center city, the fact that all the individuals converged on Las Vegas is not a negative reflection of the city. He simply chalked it up to a locale that hosts conventions for a variety of industries.

"As one person said in my office, this is one case where what happens in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas," Breuer said.

The investigation involved roughly 150 FBI agents who executed search warrants throughout the country. London police also assisted in the investigation.

"The fight to erase foreign bribery from the corporate playbook will not be won overnight, but these actions are a turning point," Breuer said.

U.S. Attorney Channing Phillips, who represents the District of Columbia, added: "Corrupt payments to foreign officials to obtain or retain business erode public confidence in our free market system and threaten to undermine foreign governments."

The indictments allege that the defendants engaged in a scheme to pay bribes to the minister of defense for a country in Africa. The scheme was part of the undercover operation, with no actual involvement from any minister of defense.

As part of the undercover operation, the defendants allegedly agreed to pay a 20 percent commission to a sales agent who the defendants believed represented the minister of defense in order to win a portion of a $15 million deal to outfit the country's presidential guard.

In reality, the sales agent was an undercover FBI agent.

Those who were indicted and the location of their companies included Daniel Alvirez and Lee Allen Tolleson, Bull Shoals, Ark., Helmie Ashiblie, Woodbridge, Va., Andrew Bigelow, Sarasota, Fla., R. Patrick Caldwell and Stephen Gerard Giordanella, Sunrise, Fla., Yochanan Cohen, San Francisco, Haim Geri, North Miami Beach, Fla., Amaro Goncalves, Springfield, Mass., John Gregory Godsey and Mark Frederick Morales, Decatur, Ga., Saul Mishkin, Aventura, Fla., John and Jeana Mushriqui, Upper Darby, Pa., David Painter and Lee Wares, United Kingdom, Pankesh Patel, United Kingdom, Ofer Paz, Israel, Israel Weisler and Michael Sachs, Stearns, Ky., and John Benson Wier III, St. Petersburg, Fla.

The maximum prison sentence for the conspiracy count and for each FCPA count is five years. The maximum sentence for the money laundering conspiracy charge is 20 years in prison.

These cases are being prosecuted by Assistant Chief Hank Bond Walther and Trial Attorney Laura N. Perkins of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section, and Matthew C. Solomon of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. The cases were investigated by the FBI Washington Field Office squad that specializes in investigations into FCPA violations.

Note how easily they were willing to lie about the airspace restriction.

Nope, they aren't ruling anything out.

Won't be long before they'll claim the UAVs need to be armed...

All the dead and dying were 'armed enemy combatants', right?