Torture kills Americans
Posted By gwfrink3 at Frink
Use of the Qur'an as an instrument of torture is a Guantánamo mistake that may do us harm for generations, warns Michael Peppard in the upcoming issue of the Catholic magazine Commonweal.
Religious torture generates determined resistance and long-lasting resentments. What has been a mere footnote for us may be the main story for the Muslim world.
The U.S. military knows that desecration of the Qur'an leads to hunger strikes and suicide attempts, that playing "The Star-Spangled Banner" over the call to prayer is demoralizing. But they seem not to have considered the long-term effects of such tactics.
Principal among those long-term effects is creation of a stream if new enemies.
The effect is the same, even if the torture does not involve disrespect of the Qur'an.
In the Washington Post today, a former Special Operations interrogator who worked in Iraq in 2006 warms that American torture techniques are costing a lot of American lives.
I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.
Worth repeating until it is heard and acted upon, the warning is not new.
In June, former Navy general counsel Alberto J. Mora told[.pdf] a Senate committee:
[T]here are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq -- as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat -- are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
Torture and the places which have become emblematic of it not only aid the enemy, they work less well than the legal, honorable interrogation techniques which preceded them. The anonymous (for security reasons) author of today's Post op-ed piece wrote that his team succeeded by turning away from the new brutality. Even with the hard cases:
I know the counter-argument well -- that we need the rough stuff for the truly hard cases, such as battle-hardened core leaders of al-Qaeda, not just run-of-the-mill Iraqi insurgents. But that's not always true: We turned several hard cases, including some foreign fighters, by using our new techniques. A few of them never abandoned the jihadist cause but still gave up critical information. One actually told me, "I thought you would torture me, and when you didn't, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That's why I decided to cooperate."
Fortunately for all of us, outlawing torture is a clearly stated priority of President-elect Barack Obama.
Watch as he takes that stand Nov. 17 on 60 Minutes:
Buy Nothing Day
Posted By gwfrink3 at Frink
Did you know?
No one had to die under the feet of door-busting shoppers this morning. The 34-year-old employee who was trampled at a Long Island, N.Y., store would have been spared had more people celebrated Black Friday as Buy Nothing Day.
On Buy Nothing Day, some of us celebrate our own refusal to be stampeded by the kind of fear-driven consumerism that kills relatively few people outright, but is deadly to lasting human happiness and a livable planet.
Mumbai help links
Posted By gwfrink3 at Frink
Wikipedia up-to-the-moment Mumbia entry and an Annonated Map of the attacks.
Photos from Mumbai
Thanks Vinu
There is also India Broadcasting Network live, streaming coverage (avoid this if you suffer from PTSD), or for less superheated up-to-date coverage, visit The Lede at the New York Times.
We will add to and update this list as we discover additional resources.
- A sortable list of the injured and dead.
- Mumbai Help has resources including several pages of lists of the dead and injured and rescued.
- Mumbai Contact Numbers has a collection of useful phone numbers.
- Mumbai Terror Helpline Blog: Terror In Bombay
- Mumbai Police contact numbers.
- JJ Hospital Requires Blood here are some numbers you can get in touch with JJ Hospital no. - 022 23735555 JJ Hospital Blood bank no. - 022 23739400?
- St. George Hospital requires blood, numbers (022) 22620242.
- Live Scrolling of Latest Updates from Twitter on Mumbai attacks
- Search twitter for additional resources at #mumbai help using twitter search.
- Search twitter and identi.ca for additional resources at #mumbai help using tweetscan.
- Search twitter for help finding loved ones using #mumbaifamilies at twitter search.
Are these comfortable shoes?
Posted By gwfrink3 at Tiger, Tiger ... I'm Burning Now
Baptist Planet writes in Post-marital about Tom Ackerman’s instructive head game.
Thanksgiving Turkey Beard (nothing had to die for)
Posted By gwfrink3 at Frink
Turkey Beard sans gobble, this one bloomed sweet-smelling almost three decades ago in a burned-over Cumberland County, N.C., glade.
Claude W. Rankin.com, named for the late photographer who made the image, explains:
Enjoy this one, and if it is not too late, perhaps you can give thanks in part by letting another gobbling and befeathered creature live to grow old.The eastern turkey beard's dense clusters of creamy, starlike flowers bloom from May to July.
Flowering on stalks two to three feet high, they are tough, elegant lilies. Their lovely flowers have a sweet nectar that attracts insects and hummingbirds.
The plant is sometimes called beargrass, because in spring bears seek out and eat the roots and tender young leaves.
...Fire-control practices have helped make them hard to find in some areas. In the absence of a fire, relatively few turkey beard plants produce flowers each year.
The Naional Geographic reports that after a fire, however, they need only a year to recover before blooming.
NatureServe, a non-profit conservation organization, reports that they are ranked "vulnerable" in North Carolina and Tennessee. They are ranked as critically imperiled in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and West Virginia. They are believed to have disappeared from Delaware and perhaps from Kentucky.
Native to North Carolina, they are also found in the pine barrens of New Jersey, and the Appalachian woods of Virginia to Georgia and Alabama. The photograph on this page was taken in Cumberland County, N.C.
Frink
quran self-defeat torture | General | Sunday November 30, 2008 | By gwfrink3
Use of the Qur'an as an instrument of torture is a Guantánamo mistake that may do us harm for generations, warns Michael Peppard in the upcoming issue of the Catholic magazine Commonweal . He writes : "> Qur'an from the British Museum Lord...
Frink
black_friday buy day nothing | General | Friday November 28, 2008 | By gwfrink3
Did you know? No one had to die under the feet of door-busting shoppers this morning. The 34-year-old employee who was trampled at a Long Island, N.Y., store would have been spared had more people celebrated Black Friday as Buy Nothing Day . "> On...
Frink
dead help injured mumbai_help mumbia phone_numbers terror | Healthcare | Thursday November 27, 2008 | By gwfrink3
Wikipedia up-to-the-moment Mumbia entry and an Annonated Map of the attacks. Photos from Mumbai Thanks Vinu There is also India Broadcasting Network live, streaming coverage (avoid this if you suffer from PTSD), or for less...
Tiger, Tiger ... I'm Burning Now
General | Thursday November 27, 2008 | By gwfrink3
Baptist Planet writes in Post-marital : Walk a do-unto-others mile in Tom Ackerman’s shoes. At religion dispatches he writes in A Marriage Manifesto… Of Sorts : I no longer recognize marriage. It's a new thing I'm trying. ...
Frink
beard sweet-smelling turkey wildflower | The Arts | Thursday November 27, 2008 | By gwfrink3
Xerophyllum asphodeloides (turkey beard) © 2004 Claude W. Rankin and Southern Connections Inc. Turkey Beard sans gobble, this one bloomed sweet-smelling almost three decades ago in a burned-over Cumberland County, N.C., glade. Claude W....
Buster
blind eclipse steve thanksgiving | General | Wednesday November 26, 2008 | By gwfrink3
This may be the last Thanksgiving with blind Steve , to whom I showed February's lunar eclipse. Stage four cancer does sometimes respond to chemotherapy. I'm fighting this thing , Steve told me after calmly explaining that his year will probably have a...
Frink
baptist baptistplanet batholic catholicism cult | Spiritual | Wednesday November 26, 2008 | By gwfrink3
Baptist Planet says, tongue firmly in ironic cheek, that the pope may have downplayed interfaith dialog just as a prominent Southern Baptist pastor argued, quite oddly, that Catholicism is a "cult" . Is the opinionated Jacksonville, Fla., pastor a ...
Frink
fair_trade olive_oil palestine peacemaking presbyterians | WWW | Tuesday November 25, 2008 | By gwfrink3
Chocolate isn't the only seasonal fair-trade foodstuff. Nor is refusal to countenance slavery inevitably a part of choosing fair-trade products over others. Import Peace is non-profit organization that sells high-quality, fair-trade , USDA...
Buster
crabtree creek raleigh | General | Saturday November 22, 2008 | By admin
Raleigh, N.C.'s Crabtree Creek, far below, on an October afternoon. (c) George Frink
Frink
gop oogedy-boogedy? | General | Friday November 21, 2008 | By gwfrink3
Suffering from "political Stockholm Syndrome," the GOP is hostage to the "oogedy-boogedy" social fundamentalists , write Christine Todd Whitman and Robert M. Bostock in the Washington Post today. So the GOP must give up the rabid identity politics ...
Frink
care dangerous mental_health ministers | Spiritual | Thursday November 20, 2008 | By gwfrink3
Your pastor is a high-risk, even life-endangering choice for mental health advice, a recent Baylor University study found. More than 32% of 293 previously diagnosed, "seriously mentally ill" church members reported that their pastor said they did not have...
Casting Light
consciousness ensoulment kurzweil machines systems | Science | Wednesday November 19, 2008 | By gwfrink3
Ray Kurzweil was asked in a silicon.com interview, will machines ever have souls ? He dismissed the soul as mere "consciousness," thus circumventing discussion of the theology of ensoulment . Endless (thus far) theological argument finessed , he...
Frink
archeology authors bible nova pbs | Spiritual | Wednesday November 19, 2008 | By gwfrink3
Fundamentalists beware of Public Television's The Bible's Buried Secrets . Or seek it out as I did, because it was created in good faith and explicitly to enlighten -- not to harm. It offers archeological evidence and scholarly analysis if perhaps not the...
Frink
catholic gay-rights marriage mormon proposition_8 | Politics | Tuesday November 18, 2008 | By gwfrink3
Fire inside and outside of church burns hotter and hotter over Mormon involvement in passage of California's Proposition 8 .
Tiger, Tiger ... I'm Burning Now
attorney general history holder obama | Politics | Tuesday November 18, 2008 | By gwfrink3
Selection of Eric H. Holder Jr. as his attorney general was another history-making step by President-elect Barack Obama, and a good one. First, Holder has the right experience. Yesterday the New York Times wrote : Now in private practice as a partner...
Tiger, Tiger ... I'm Burning Now
climate global_warming obama speech | SciMed | Tuesday November 18, 2008 | By gwfrink3
President elect Barack Obama 's speech via video to the bi-partisan Governors Global Climate Summit in Los Angeles this morning renews his stand against global warming, giving it to us correctly as a national security and economic issue. This is in sharp...
Buster
atamasco claude fayetteville lily rankin zephyranthes | Family | Sunday November 16, 2008 | By buster
Named "Easter" lily by Colonial Era settlers, this flower's Latin name is Zephyranthes atamasco. It blooms from March until May. Copyright Claude W. Rankin and Southern Connections Inc. Often called "rain lily," it is a North Carolna native...
Buster
car/train_accident grandfather grandmother hinnant resources suicide | General | Sunday November 16, 2008 | By gwfrink3
Four decades have passed since my maternal grandfather, B.L. Hinnant , used his favorite target pistol on himself. That was a couple of years after my maternal grandmother. Ruth Hinnant, was killed in a car/train accident. I have often wished for a...
Frink
depression holiday mental_illness | Healthcare | Sunday November 16, 2008 | By gwfrink3
"Happy Thanksgiving," soon to be "Joy to the world," unless you have the holiday blues -- a sometimes debilitating and dangerous disease. Holiday depression is so commonplace and so hard to recognize that the Mayo Clinic has a Web...
Frink
batholic catholic conservative liberal | Spiritual | Saturday November 15, 2008 | By gwfrink3
"Batholics in Bohemia, ...or when your pastor enquires of you" is a Czeck cartoon which was inspired by Tony Cartledge's May 20, 2005, blog (no longer online) "Baptists or Batholics?" The caption translates, "Did you vote for Christian democratic party,...
Frink
abortion anti-gay common culture good of politics the values voters wars | Politics | Saturday November 15, 2008 | By gwfrink3
The culture wars lost the election, we learn from a post-election poll published Nov. 14; the politics of the common good won . Less than 20% of the "values voters" support the culture war's narrow, anti-abortion/anti-gay agenda, according to a Nov....
Frink
bscnc carolina cfb culture north sbc wars | Spiritual | Friday November 14, 2008 | By gwfrink3
About half of North Carolina churchgoers are Baptists, and for years have been increasingly divided against one another by the 1979 fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention . On Nov. 12, the fundamentalists at Baptist State...
Frink
culture obama schaeffer wars | Politics | Friday November 14, 2008 | By woody
Barack Obama's victory in the presidential election might not have been the end of the culture wars, but it is certainly winding them down. Frank Scheaffer , himself a former religious right advocate , points out that Obama's election reintroduces nuance...
Tiger, Tiger ... I'm Burning Now
8799 b.l._hinnant formalhaut george_frink grandfather hr hubble planet | SciMed | Thursday November 13, 2008 | By gwfrink3
I was born legally blind . My first sharply focused view of the stars was through my maternal grandfather's binoculars as he cradled me in his arms. From him I first learned which of those stars were planets; which suns. From both grandfathers I acquired...
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