| Tuesday, October
23, 2001
Article in the Times of London.
> FBI considers torture as suspects stay silent
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2001350021-2001364909,00.html
The lead paragraph says...
> AMERICAN investigators are considering
resorting to harsher interrogation > techniques, including torture,
after facing a wall of silence from jailed > suspected members of Osama
bin Laden¹s al-Qaeda network, according to a report > yesterday.
...from later in the story...
> ³We are known for humanitarian treatment, so
basically we are stuck. Usually > there is some incentive, some angle
to play, what you can do for them. But it > could get to that spot
where we could go to pressure . . . where we don¹t have > a choice,
and we are probably getting there,² an FBI agent involved in the >
investigation told the paper.
A couple of months ago I would have found this
headline ridiculous. Not that I wouldn't have believed that such things
hadn't happened in the past, but that such was being discussed openly as
accepted policy.
I have often wondered how an interrogator in such a
situation could tell whether the suspect is withholding information, or
simply doesn't know anything. Of course if one doesn't care about harming
an innocent...
Even assuming that one could condone such activities
(which I personally could not) for the protection of the greater good, if
this becomes policy there are bound to be mistakes made and innocent
people tortured. What is the acceptable ratio of innocents tortured to
terrorists caught?
David Reynolds
Indeed. Note that one Texas
physician was held for 12 days before someone pointed out that his name
was a very common one and there was no evidence whatever that he had any
connection with the terrorists. The
legacy of Waco is with us at all times.
Jerry:
Alas, the )blond) lady with the exploding head tried
ironing her anthrax-ridden correspondence, too. Unfortunately, (according
to snopes.com) this doesn't seem to be a panacea:
"Controversy exists over the pronouncement that
heat kills anthrax. According to Jeanne Guillemin, a medical
anthropologist and a Professor of Sociology and Senior Fellow at MIT's
Security Studies Program who was part of a team that investigated a
suspicious anthrax epidemic that took place in 1979 in the former USSR,
it's sunlight, not heat, that does in the bacterium:
Sunshine destroys anthrax spores, but very little
else does. Heat doesn't, radiation doesn't. It's resistant to explosives.
That's precisely the reason why anthrax was developed as a weapon, because
it's tough, whereas most bacteria and viruses are fragile.
Other sources state anthrax spores can survive
sunlight for a few days, as well as survive heat and steam in temperatures
up to 318° F. None of that news is particularly heartening in light of
the advice to subject the day's incoming mail to a vigorous steam ironing.
Also, applying the weight of an iron to a closed envelope could cause the
contents of a piece of mail to be ejected., and thus the supposed
"cure" could lead to a far greater exposure to anthrax rather
than a nullification of the threat.
Ironing your mail is the "sure-fire and deadly
potato bug killer" of the day -- it holds out the promise of a cheap,
readily-available counter to the risk of contagion to anyone who can wield
a steam iron. However, like its 1930s counterpart, the longed-for easy
solution does not turn out to be all it is touted to be."
Henry Stern
Captain Morse suggests boiling all
your mail. It will save a lot of time and effort...
Do note that you are about as likely
to be killed by lightning as anthrax so far. Which is not to make light of
a serious thing, but to put it into perspective. It is not London during
the Blitz. "The King
wouldn't leave London and I wouldn't leave the King." The Queen
Mother on why she didn't retreat to Balmorral Castle during the Blitz...
Dr. Pournelle:
Rick Cartwright has his grammatical number wrong.
TVA has only one pumped storage facility at Raccoon Mountain in Tennessee,
described in general at http://www.tva.gov/insidetva/mar_27_01/index.htm
It is a highly useful load-leveling facility using established
hydroelectric engineering approaches, but I don't know that it is widely
applicable. Proper topography obviously matters a lot.
TVA is working on another storage facility using the
Regenesys regenerative fuel cell - redox flow cell. Looks like a big
battery with tanks and tanks of electrolytes. General mention at http://www.tva.gov/news/index.htm#innovate
and part of the EIS is online at http://www.tva.gov/environment/reports/regenesys/chapter_2.pdf
Regensys flogs their stuff at http://www.regenesys.com/ourproducts/regenesys.htm
and gives a bit of detail at http://www.regenesys.com/ourtechnologies/regfuel.htm
and following pages of that site.
A convenience in leveling the load, especially
considering the cost and difficulty of permitting and building new base
load power plants, but not a power source.
I am not competent to judge such things, I worked at
TVA but as a chemical engineer at what I still think of as the National
Fertilizer Development Center, even though changing priorities have led to
a change in mission and name to Environmental Research Center. There is
also a Public Power Institute which promotes such projects as Green Power
(pay extra on your utility bill to get environmentally friendly power from
wind, hydro, and a little biomass and solar) and carbon sequestration
research.
I just hope I have provided a little more grist for
the mill.
Jim Watson
Everyone forgets that TVA started as
Mussel Shoals nitrogen fixing plant to make guncotton for defense...
OOPS!!
Dr. Pournelle,
That's Muscle Shoals, podnuh, even though there are
mussels (and mussel divers, the shells are still used for buttons and
cultured pearl "seeds") in the Tennessee River.
The TVA Environmental Research Center is on the site
of US Nitrate Plant No. 2. My first office, lab, and pilot plant as an
engineering co-op student in 1964 were in buildings with 1918
cornerstones. Some are still there. The plant was finished two weeks after
the Armistice 11/11/18 and mothballed for future use. TVA got it for
fertilizer R&D in the impoverished Tennessee Valley in 1933. That was
not the end of its original purpose, we shipped nitric acid to Army
munitions plants right up through the Viet Nam era. I think some of our
elemental phosphorus production went into P4 shells, too. In the early
'50s, the Phosphate Development Works had turned some of that phosphorus
into an organophosphate compound that was the feedstock for nerve gas
production in Denver. TVA personnel have done a lot of the work
dismantling the CW plants in Denver over the past several years. Most of
the phosphorus went into phosphoric acid manufacture and thence into
phosphate fertilizer, though. Great stuff, but it's too expensive and
energy intensive to make fertilizer that way any more.
We got into energy and chemicals, too. I worked on
coal gasification (for ammonia synthesis gas) during the natural gas price
scares of the late '70s. In the '80s I worked on fuel alcohol made by acid
hydrolysis of cellulose into fermentable sugars followed by fermentation
with particular strains of yeast. That gave us grain alcohol made from
wood. Too raw to drink, too expensive to burn.
Regards,
Jim Watson
Thanks!
Jerry:
If you want to make sure there's no anthrax in your
incoming mail, simply put it in a self-cleaning oven, and run it through a
full "clean" cycle. Of course, if you want to read the mail
afterwards, there are certain drawbacks to this technique....
...........Karl Lembke
Thank you, Mr. Scribe...
Dr. P.
Just had to comment on the issue raised in the mail
today.
Torture is not reasonable, _is_ morally offensive
and counterproductive.
The purpose of interrogation is to extract accurate
useable information in a timely fashion. Torture is directed to breaking
the will of a subject with the intent of causing them to talk. Note that
unless the will is totally broken, the "accurate and useable"
portion becomes optional and beside the point of the exercise.
Further the use of torture destroys both the
credibility of the interrogator and the hope of future cooperation with
the source.
At a certain point, _any person_ will, due to the
application of sufficient force, start to babble and provide
"information", whether they have any "true"
information to give or not. Additional investigatory resources need to be
directed toward following up and verifying/denying the
"information" provided. These resources might, if not so
sidetracked, might and may yield much more value than chasing phantoms
brought on by the application of excessive force.
This does not mean that "alternative
means" of interrogation might not be available, useful and
applicable. For example, the use of various hypnotic drugs can and
frequently will be much more productive. Such drugs, as well as other
non-torture methods may produce information that is inadmissible for use
in a criminal court but very useful for the purpose of directing military
or "other" operations.
Lastly, when dealing with a "ideologically
committed" source, the decent into barbarism takes away the
"moral high ground" that might be more valuable for future
encounters with the same source.
As tools of interrogation, Lying, cheating,
stealing, threats and promises are legitimate and valuable tools. The use
of threats and promises requires that the interrogator offer only what
he/she can deliver and no more. A loss of credibility can be even a
greater loss, as it allows no grounds for future/follow-up examination of
the source.
Until Next time,
Looking forward to further discourse
DJP
No trees were harmed in the transmission of this
message. However, a rather large number of electrons were temporarily
inconvenienced.
I am perfectly willing to use
electronic truth systems -- polygraphs -- in interrogation of wartime
prisoners. But physical torture is the sign of a rather stupid barbarous
regime. The payoff is low and the cost is great. And
from Roland Subject: I'm glad the G-Men have their priorities set properly. http://www.interactiveweek.com/article/0,3658,s%3D605%26a%253D16678,00.asp Indeed. And
Mr. Hastings has his moment:
Please pardon me for saying: I told you so.
Okay, sorry about that. :-)
Last June, I said that Linux would have decent
applications within "a year or two". Now the current StarOffice
is approaching decent. I'm happy about this, of course. Meanwhile, AbiWord
is at 0.9.4; version 1.0 is coming; and the recently-released Gnumeric
0.71 now supports graphing. Linux applications are getting there.
I went back to the Linux Applications page, and
noted that you added an email about Samba, and your reply. You said that
you needed a guru to help you with Samba. And suddenly I realized I ought
to send you an email to tell you about Webmin.
http://www.webmin.com/webmin/
I use Webmin to control my Samba servers. I also use
it for Apache, for configuring security, and several other tasks. In
Debian I installed the "webmin-ssl" package, so I talk to Webmin
over a secure (https://) web connection with SSL encryption.
The icing on the cake is that I can run Webmin from
any computer on my home network, not just from the console of my server
computer.
If you can make your way around a Windows Control
Panel, you can use Webmin. If you wish you had Samba running, get both
Samba and Webmin and see what you think.
Stay well.
-- Steve R. Hastings "Vita est" steve@hastings.org
http://www.blarg.net/~steveha
"Four names came to my mind Dresden,
Hamburg, Hiroshima, Nagasaki. US is not the only place that has suffered
something unpleasant. In fact compared to these cities you have had a
marginal number of dead and suffering." - Tapio
Manner Vantaa Finland
Interesting. It would appear that Europeans are just
as apt to illogical statements based on warped views of history and any
American. Does the Honorable Vantaa equate attacks conducted during
declared war with acts of terror? It appears so. I do not deny that making
war on the civilian population of enemy states is something that should
give us pause. The concept of 'total war' is not a comfortable one. But,
and there is always a but, to the extent you can draw a parallel between
9/11/01 and any other event, the proper comparisons would be Pearl Harbor,
and Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union.
As to the marginal number of dead and suffering --
well, I hate to get into this sort of attempt to quantify death and
suffering, but again the point is act of war vs act of terror. The
citizens of Dresden and Hamburg had some warning, and some defense. Less
so in the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because of the nature of the
attack - one high altitude bomber as opposed to waves of them.
Tim Morris
The last item in today's Wall Street Journal
"Best of the Web Today" feature is:
Hillary's Entourage
News 12 Westchester, a local cable TV channel,
reports that a vehicle in Sen. Hillary Clinton's entourage " tried to
bypass a mandatory check point at the airport" in White Plains, N.Y.,
injuring a county policeman who tried to stop the car from getting
through. The headline on the News 12 report: "Clinton OK After
Airport Incident." What a relief.
"Best of the Web Today" Monday, October
15, 2001 1:52 p.m. EDT http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=95001325
As of right now (14:00 MDT / 16:00 EDT), the
headline of the source story is "Officer injured by Clinton
motorcade" [ http://www.news12.com/CDA/Articles/View/0,2049,11-11-22777-35,00.html
].
Officer injured by Clinton motorcade (10/14/01)
YONKERS - A bizarre accident at Westchester County Airport involved
Senator Hillary Clinton's entourage Sunday.
Sources tell News 12 Westchester that a vehicle in
Senator Clinton's security team tried to bypass a mandatory check point at
the airport, which has been under a heightened state of alert since the
terrorist attacks. A county police officer attempting to stop the vehicle
from getting through injured his shoulder. That officer was taken to Saint
Agnes Hospital in White Plains, and his condition is not known.
Senator Clinton, who turned 54 Sunday, was en route
to board a private jet to an unreleased destination. The former first lady
could not be reached for comment.
------------------------------
from "1984" by George Orwell:
O'Brien was looking down at him speculatively. More
than ever he had the air of a teacher taking pains with a wayward but
promising child.
'There is a Party slogan dealing with the control of
the past,' he said. 'Repeat it, if you please.'
"Who controls the past controls the future: who
controls the present controls the past," repeated Winston obediently.
"Who controls the present controls the
past," said O'Brien, nodding his head with slow approval. 'Is it your
opinion, Winston, that the past has real existence?'
Again the feeling of helplessness descended upon
Winston. His eyes flitted towards the dial. He not only did not know
whether 'yes' or 'no' was the answer that would save him from pain; he did
not even know which answer he believed to be the true one.
O'Brien smiled faintly. 'You are no metaphysician,
Winston,' he said. 'Until this moment you had never considered what is
meant by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does the past exist
concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of
solid objects, where the past is still happening?'
'No.'
'Then where does the past exist, if at all?'
'In records. It is written down.'
'In records. And- ?'
'In the mind. In human memories.'
'In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control
all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we
not?'
Robert Racansky
Indeed.
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